Living Well, No Matter What

How to thrive with life’s most difficult challenges. Including mindfulness tools from secular and Jewish sources

Shalom Bayit From an Unexpected Source

Feb 1, 2022 | Jewish thought and practice, Mind & Body

Written by Margo Helman, MSW

Oprah and the Dalai Lama both love him, but does Eckhart Tolle have anything to teach Observant Jews? 

If you’ve never heard of him, Ekhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher and self-help author of seven books. His teachings are seen as controversial by followers of conventional religious practices because his perspective is drawn from many faiths.

In his mega bestseller, The Power of Now, Tolle has a chapter on the spirituality of relationships which can give a boost to your midot, or character virtues, particularly in dealing with difficult people and with conflict in relationships that are precious to you. 

Tolle writes that romantic relationships are deeply flawed. In our day-to-day marital lives, we can swing between fury and forgiveness, between sweet connection and cold alienation. In the space of a number of years or months, we may go from believing that this person is our salvation – the only one in the entire world who can really see and love us, to blaming this same person for the bitter disappointments of our lives. Our view of our lover seesaws as we move between worship and blame. Some may then leave one relationship to search elsewhere for that exquisite human who can make them finally happy. Even when we stay, our search for healing through our romantic relationship often leaves us woefully disappointed. 

Tolle teaches that only through practice of presence, which is intentional focus on the present moment, can we heal our relationships and our lives. This is in line with Judaism’s focus on developing one’s own midot and in seeking a partner with good character values as well. Anything that happens to us is seen as an opportunity for our own spiritual growth. Tolle puts it perhaps more strongly. “Whenever your relationship is not working, whenever it brings out the ‘madness’ in you and in your partner, be glad. What was unconscious is being brought up to the light”.

Conflict is one of the most challenging aspects of a relationship. Here is this person whom we care deeply about. Our lives are intertwined with theirs. We’ve chosen them to be our life partner. Or we gave birth to them and are still responsible for their wellbeing. They are a family member whom we would never cut off from. Or they are involved with us in a joint endeavor that is close to our hearts. And then: conflict. Suddenly they are an obstacle to our joy and satisfaction. They behave in ways that we cannot tolerate and insist upon opinions that we cannot fathom. But Tolle calls conflict “an opportunity for salvation”. In my work with clients and program participants, as well as in my own difficult relationships, I’ve seen this to be true. Mastering conflict, or rather, working gradually towards a practice of calm conflict, improves 

every area of our lives. If during conflict we can connect even slightly to our inner peace and wisdom, our ability to practice this elsewhere is vastly enhanced. 

Tolle tells us how. “If there is anger,” he writes, “know that there is anger… When your partner – or your mother or your child, is angry, hold (the anger) in the loving embrace of your knowing so that you won’t react.” So, what does this mean? Holding someone’s anger in the loving embrace of one’s knowing is to have compassion for the other even while not hiding from the truth of their current destructiveness. It is to see the angry face of the other, to hear their foul words, to know them as deeply unhelpful and even destructive, but at the same time, to know that this is a human being filled with wonder and love. 

This is a mentally strenuous practice. To hold both sides of our experience of the other – that they are behaving badly and that they are worthy of love and full of good. When we put our attention on practicing this it can help us to control our own behavior. Relationship is a complicated human vessel and the two of us are in it together. Compassion for both of us becomes part of the experience. This gives us more calmness in the moment and more ability to choose our response, instead of losing it. Tolle goes on to say that if you do lose it, hold that too in your knowing with compassion for your own flawed humanity. 

“The relationship then becomes your spiritual practice,” writes Tolle. Spiritual practice in day-to-day life is simply (but not easily) to recognize the is-ness of the moment, with compassion. To be with whatever is, knowing that we cannot change this moment. This moment already is. It is therefore as irreversible as the past. Our inner insistence that reality be different than it is, is the source of all suffering and it contributes greatly to our tendency to lose it during conflict. Instead, when we are compassionately aware of our own and the other’s humanity we practice radical acceptance of our own flawed nature  as well as that of the other. This is mindfulness at its deepest and most challenging. To be present to our own anger and to the other’s anger and to hold it in our awareness. If we can practice this, and a little goes a long way, we can then choose our response rather than being pushed into reactivity and adding fuel to the fire that causes conflict to spiral out of control.

 

Tolle brings a second powerful approach when he urges us to relinquish judgment and to know that a person’s “unconscious” behavior does not reflect the truth of who they are. When involved in conflict, we can be furious at the other person. We may deeply resent their behavior. Especially when interacting with an adult who should know better, and when we pride our own selves on knowing better. We would never do such a thing. How could they act this way? They must be severely limited in intellect (stupid), moral fiber (evil) or consideration (mean). Tolle and other thinkers would have us recognize that all human beings, and we too, are capable of the best and the worst of human behavior; and that when someone is behaving badly they are in the grip of unconsciousness. 

We know this about ourselves. When we lose our composure and yell at someone or use insulting or hurtful words, later on we may say to ourselves, “What was I thinking?” We call it “losing it”. What have we lost? Composure. Consciousness. Control over our behavior. Sometimes the more we work on ourselves, the more we are liable to judge the other for their inability to behave constructively. We can lose our compassion and patience, believing the other person to be lacking basic goodness. Tolle says no: better to remember that the angry human being in front of us is in the grip of their own unconsciousness. Like all humans, they are deeply good. They’ve been pushed over the edge by their own distress. 

Of course judgment is crucial. We need to retain and rely on our judgment. Without judgment, we’d step into the street in the middle of traffic. We’d enter into business or personal relationships with people who are clearly untrustworthy. Judgment allows us to know what we want and what we don’t want, what we’re willing to accept and what we’re not. But judgment of the more critical kind is the opposite of being present. Instead, Tolle would encourage us to see the other person’s behavior and know that it comes from their own distress, to remember that there are many positive aspects of this person that we are deeply grateful for and to connect as best we can to the present moment. This practice recalls the blessing of Elohai Neshama, when we are reminded every morning that despite the mistakes of yesterday, our soul is still pure. So is the other person’s.  

Tolle says no: better to remember that the angry human being in front of us is in the grip of their own unconsciousness. Like all humans, they are deeply good. They’ve been pushed over the edge by their own distress.

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