A New Earth: It works... who would have thought?

More than 20 years ago, as I was leaving a bookstore in Fredericton, N.B., I saw a guy tottering under a stack of self-help books. A strand of his combover came loose. He plunked the books confidently on the counter next to the cashier, who said something quietly funny. The poor bastard was out of breath. “All of ‘em,” he said. “Every damn one.” This is back when I was invincible. By my mid-30s, I was more or less that guy. I needed help. That’s when I read A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, and it helped. 

A New Earth: a brief overview of ego and awareness  

A New Earth is a self-help book. It’s what I would have derisively called pop-spirituality, before I read it. Published in 2005, its tag line is Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. It’s sold literally millions of copies and was endorsed by Oprah as ‘a wake-up call for the entire planet, one reader at a time.’

Tolle, who is a spiritual teacher, is originally from Germany, attended Cambridge at one point, and landed on the New York Times Best Seller list in 2000 for his self-help book The Power of Now, also Oprah approved.

In A New Earth, Tolle references the teachings of Zen Buddhism, the Bible, Hinduism and Sufism to illustrate the figures throughout history who were able to transcend the ego and enter into another realm of human consciousness. According to Tolle, becoming aware of our own egos can help humanity reach the next stage in the evolution of consciousness, or “a new earth.”

But what is the ego exactly?

Tolle writes: “‘I’ embodies the primordial error, a misperception of who you are, an illusory sense of identity. This is the ego.” Essentially, the ego is an incessant thought pattern, a pathology, that needs to feel superior (or separate) from others.

If someone has more, knows more, or can do more than I, the ego feels threatened because the feeling of “less” diminishes its imagined sense of self.

People become prisoners of their own minds, lost in the language of the ego: complaining, resentment, reactivity, grievance, victimization.

The good news, Tolle writes, is that by becoming aware of the ego, and practicing awareness, you can begin to transcend the ego, the mind and the voice. You can detach from feelings of (or fearing) superiority and ownership and see the mind for what it truly is, a stream of thoughts that are often conditioned by one’s environment anyway.  

The book also discusses the concept of the “pain-body,” which is the body’s emotional response to one’s past and to thought patterns.

While that is worth exploring, since it’s part of this chain of unconsciousness, the parts of the book that really helped me out of my predicament when I first read it in 2015 dealt first with “the voice in the head.”

And I think that’s the strength of the book and why it appeals to so many different people.

Whatever deeply personal thing or thought or whatever you’re experiencing, it’s likely Tolle will gently point it out and suggest it’s common for thoughts to behave these ways.

The ego is not personal, he says.  

To learn that I’m not totally a psychopath and that both the brain, which is essentially a machine designed to think, and my environment are both doing their jobs was pretty relieving. I was like, oh, the system works—it just kind of sucks if you’re unaware of it.

Tolle draws you in in the first third of the book by identifying egoic behaviours on the personal and cultural levels, finding the root(s) of the ego, and detailing the roles many of us enter into when we live unconsciously.

The genius of this, really, is the first parts of the book make you aware of the voice in your head, of certain thought patterns that lead to certain harsh feelings and perhaps behaviours. And that’s the point all the way through—awareness.

As you’re learning, about what the ego is, the ego starts to recede, little by little, meaning you’re especially open to learning about presence, about how to stay present, how to see the ego for what it is.  

A New Earth: first reading vs. second reading

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if you read A New Earth and you’re somehow this amazing, cured person. In fact, the whole reason I’m writing about A New Earth for a blog about re-reading books is because I felt like I actively needed to re-read it.

As I mentioned, I first read it in 2015. I was living alone, going through a break-up (which flared up my already healthy ego), and self-medicating with alcohol, frankly. It’s not an uncommon predicament, to be sure. But I really got to a point where I was having trouble sleeping. I felt overwhelmed by my own thoughts, not only that they were defensive or aggrieved or whatever, but because it was just so constant.

My father, who’s been on his own journey with all this stuff, had given me The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer and then A New Earth. These were books I really was not interested in reading. I read the Classics of Literature, God dammit! I don’t read this pop-spirituality bullshit. I’m not going to dumb myself down to the same level as recovering alcoholics and midwestern housewives! Just pure ego, really. I don’t think I ever articulated it in that way, but these prejudices were in there.

But one night I hit a point of desperation. I couldn’t stand to go to the bar, and I couldn’t stand to not, so I literally speed read A New Earth into the morning, slept, woke up, and read until I finished it. I think I read it in two days. It was very fevered like that guy in the bookstore in Fredericton.

And little by little, the voice quieted down. I could recognize it, listen to it with a little calmness, and then it’d just kind of die away. It wasn’t a miracle, it’s just that it was helpful.

Then I went another couple years, started living unconsciously again, for reason X, Y and Z, and had to read it again. And then again. And then I’d read Pema Chodron and Thich Nhat Hanh and so on.

     Last week, I found myself muttering again, which is like a part-time job. Just doing the dishes. Not about anything pressing or about anyone present. For no reason. I’d just been overwhelmed starting my new job and enrolling in a course at the U of T. On the surface, my life is certainly in a better place than it was in 2015, but I’ve learned that there are elements of books like A New Earth that don’t hurt to remind yourself of.

     And it certainly has helped.

A New Earth: should you read it?

I would heartily recommend A New Earth to anyone who feels like they need help. Anyone who has trouble shutting the chattering mind up or who’s constantly lost in thoughts of the past or future.

I wasn’t particularly critical of it either time I read it. That seems to be completely besides the point. Yes, it’s pop-spirituality, but I don’t mean that as derisively as I used to. It’s simply written, direct, easy to understand. It contains wisdom from spiritual teachers, as well as different ways of reading them.

Fine, great.

All this shit we go through, it’s not something that really goes away. Not in my experience, anyway. But it’s just like anything else. The more you practice the better you get at it.

So, yes. Read it, then re-read it as needed.