The Ego Trap: Eckhart Tolle on Cults & Other Mental Viruses (Part 1)
A Little Bit Culty
Sarah Edmondson & Anthony “Nippy” Ames
4.6 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2022
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Where’s the healthy happy medium between radical presence and reality-based pragmatism in a world that’s off the rails? Can cynics be sages? Is culty behavior inevitable once you’ve reached rockstar levels of social influence as a spiritual teacher? In this first of two episodes with Eckhart Tolle, we did our best to not shit our pants a little while asking him about what separates ‘good’ teachers from the scary ones, and how to cultivate an awakened state without falling down a cult rabbit hole. He’s got some gems to share. After all, he’s widely recognized as one of the most inspiring spiritual leaders in the world. His international bestsellers have been translated into 52 languages. And we can’t verify this, but he might be one of the MOST quoted and/or misquoted contemporary spiritual gurus ever. Buckle up, this one’s a doozy…it’s not every day you get an Oprah BFF to agree to be on your pod.
CREDITS:
Executive Producers: Sarah Edmondson & Anthony Ames
Production Partner: Citizens of Sound
Producer: Will Retherford
Senior Producer: Jess Tardy
Theme Song: “Cultivated” by Jon Bryant co-written with Nygel Asselin
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The views and opinions expressed by a little bit cultier, those are the hosts and don't reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. |
| 0:06.6 | Any of the, quote, fire content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors of the opinion and are not intended to malign a religion, a group, a club, an organization, business individual, anyone or anything unless they're... |
| 0:20.2 | You're a douchebag. |
| 0:21.0 | Yeah. We're not doctors, psychologists, therapists, licensed counselors or shamans, even though you kind of think you are sometimes. |
| 0:27.4 | I'm like an urban shaman, okay? |
| 0:29.1 | Good talk. |
| 0:39.3 | Hey everybody, Sarah Edmonds in here. |
| 0:41.7 | And I'm Anthony Ames, aka Nippy, Sarah's husband and you're listening to a little bit cultier. |
| 0:48.1 | AKA a LBC. |
| 0:49.7 | A podcast about what happens when devotion goes to the dark side. |
| 0:53.1 | We've been there and back again, a little about us. |
| 0:55.8 | True Story, we met and fell in love in a cult. |
| 0:59.2 | And then we woke up and got the hell out of dodge. |
| 1:01.6 | And the whole thing was captured in the HBO documentary series The Bow. |
| 1:05.2 | Now in its second season. |
| 1:06.9 | I also wrote about our experience in my memoir, SCARD. |
| 1:10.0 | The true Story of how I escaped Naxiom, the cult that bound my life. |
| 1:13.8 | Look at us, couple of married podcasters who just happened to have a weekly date night. |
| 1:18.4 | Are we interview experts and advocates and things like cult awareness and mind control? |
| 1:22.6 | Oh wait, wait, this does not count toward date nightbate. |
| 1:25.4 | We got to schedule that that separate. |
| 1:27.0 | So there's two days we gotta hate. |
... |
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