Ego--not just your vanity, but all the things that are wrapped up in your sense of identity and that can therefore make you feel vulnerable and defensive--is a huge roadblock on a horseman's journey. So a few months ago when a friend mentioned he was reading a book about dealing with your ego, I said, "That's exactly what I need."
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle is a sort of spiritual self-help book that is geared toward helping you be in the present moment without being mired in excessive analysis or emotion. Tolle's book is unlike anything I've read in its immediacy: rather than just telling you how to change your focus, the process of reading the book itself changes your focus so that you feel lighter and happier just by reading it.
And it's absolutely what every horseman needs. It helps you understand how to be more like a horse by living with the horse in the present moment. And it gives you a road map out of resentment and frustration by showing you how to get outside of the stories you tell yourself that create those emotions.
In that sense, it builds on Linda Parelli's strategy of stepping back and saying, "How interesting . . . ": rather than just giving you a strategy for when you're already emotional, it gives you a whole new way of looking at the world that--hopefully--helps you not to go there in the first place.
I know I'll read this book again and again if only because reading it is like an active meditation that makes your thinking--and therefore the world--a better place.
Well, I guess that does it, Contrarian. You've just shifted my summer reading list. You often write about horse lore on my parenting blog, so let me return the favor here. Good grief, does my ego ever get in my way as a parent. Maybe especially as a parent coach, I've got loads of "all the things that are wrapped up in my sense of identity and that can therefore make me feel vulnerable and defensive." I feel them with Kylin when he throws a fit in public. I feel them when someone else's child is kind and giving but mine won't share something he's got 14 of. I feel them when I just don't know what to do. As Kylin and I are headed into our summer vacation together, this would be an excellent book to spend time with asap.
ReplyDeleteI read this when Oprah was all over it and doing her weekly interviews with Eckhart. I'm curious to see how life has spiraled around to make the material brand new to me in *this* now.
Thank you!
Thanks for stopping by over here, Lalah. I'll be curious to hear how the second read goes. I figured you must have encountered this one before. FYI, I just bought it to read it (and underline)--I've actually been listening to Tolle read it, which may enhance the meditative effect.
ReplyDelete(And we totally need to schedule a dinner together some time . . . )