So I recently finished reading Eckhart Tolle - A New Earth. I highly recommend it for almost anyone - at the very least, it offers a lot of good ideas to self-reflect on. After reading it, I was confused as some of it seems to conflict with some of the ideas we agree on in seduction (which have benefited me), while some of it supports those ideas. Both for myself and for yalls, I figured I'd cover some of the main points and how I feel they relate. Having read some of Eck.Tolle material, this might make more sense than otherwise.

Living in the present: This is huge. I think a relevant quote to simply explain this is:

If you are sad, you are living in the past.

If you are anxious, you are living in the future.

If you are happy, you are living in the present.

If you live in the present, even in 'stressful' situations, you can generally avoid anxiety and react to things very smoothly, as if you expect too much, you can become flustered when things go against your expectations. If you rationalize not approaching because the previous hour you weren't up for it, or had bad experiences, you are living in the past. The present moment is all that you ever have, so take it as nothing more than that.

Now, where there might be a bit of conflict is dealing with future goals - if you are aiming for things in the future, that (on the surface) isn't being 'present'. I do think Eck.Tolle covers this later in the book, but it will probably require a re-read before that clicks. Personally, I have become content with not setting concrete goals, but simply trying to always be in-tune with my best self.

Being present generally seems to be a personal thing - you are present with yourself, with life, with what is happening around you - generally being 'aware'. However, I feel there may need to be a different type of present you should aim for: being 'socially present' - you generally place some sort of importance on understanding how people in a social reaction are, and fit yourself into that setting in a positive way. I feel 'being present' requires a different sort of focus than being 'socially present'.

For example, if you approached a girl, you could be happy within yourself, but that might not be enough to get her interested in you - you need to focus more on the interaction and her.

Being at peace: Much of the book teaches you to be at peace with who you are and your circumstances. Again, this has, on the surface, pros and cons as far as seduction:

If you are at peace, you generally do not give a needy vibe - you are truly happy with who you are, regardless of any 'flaws' or imperfect traits.

However, I feel if you are 'too much at peace', you may never force yourself out of your comfort zone - what reason is there to approach if you are at peace with not approaching? In the end, we want to have more connections with people, and approaching is a great way to find those connections.

Being beyond thoughts and emotions, stepping away from the ego: This is another great concept that he goes into great detail - I think this is probably the most important point for most people, as it truly leads to understanding yourself better.

In short, this is the cousin of 'outcome independence'/core confidence - most people identify with their emotions and thoughts. If you realize these are things that just happen to you, but don't define you, it's easy to step back, observe and accept them, and not let them affect you. So, if you aren't your emotions and thoughts, what are you? The 'real you' is the awareness that exists above those. Most people are stuck in their emotions and thoughts, and as such can have pretty severe mood swings, and let external events affect them.

The Ego: many people (moreso in guys) have big egos that they need to feed. The ego feeds on things of 'form' - if you identify with your ego, things like 'I have these things', 'I make this much money', 'I am better than X because', 'I have a superhot girlfriend' are things you identify with, and validate you/your ego (in short, having things to brag about/seeing yourself as better than others). Once you realize these thoughts and using them as your source of value is unhealthy, you both become a more easy-going, friendly, likable person, and you start to clearly see the ego in others, as you understand what sorts of thoughts/words are from the ego.

Before understanding your own ego, if someone insults your ego ('hey man I'm actually better than you at this thing', 'you don't know this', 'you should have this'), you would react in defense, as you needed to prove to the other person that you do have value, that you are actually good at those things and don't need that stuff, etc. After you start to observe and correct your ego-based actions, you react differently. If someone puts you down, your response to that might be 'is that so?'. You don't feel lessened or the need to defend (your 'core confidence' is untouchable, bro!), and instead your thoughts are more geared towards 'how can I show this person the reasons why he is saying this stuff?', or, 'how can I quickly satiate this person enough so we can move on?', or even 'how can I calmly get this person to trip on their own ego?' (if it's an AMOG situation they started).

All in all, there is a lot of good advice and ideas to reflect on, relating to life, mental state, emotions, other people, everything really. It's generally advertised as a 'new age spiritual' book, but I feel most of the discussion is on personal mentality and shouldn't be dismissed as a book that simply talks about 'the color of your aura'-type things =p I didn't find that I immediately wanted to accept and apply 100% of the advice in the book, but a lot of the core stuff I did make an effort to adopt, and I did vibe with many of the abstract themes presented. For anyone who decides to read his books (I recommend A New Earth), I suggest you approach it with an open mind, and figure out how much of those ideas would be good to consider, given your goals.

edit: can't figure out how to get more separation between paragraphs ;/