Eckhart Tolle offers sound advice and instruction on some of the important mental skills that offer a way to detach from the gravitational pull of cultural and relational angst.  Using his technique to quite the mind can lead to greater confidence, greater creativity and greater satisfaction in responding to the our human situations.  Unfortunately, Tolle, following an all too typical trend among self-help authors, tries to do too much.  Eckhart Tolle suggests that he is an enlightened being and that may be the case, depending on what is meant by “enlightened”.  However, there is no guarantee that an enlightened being will be a successful enlightener of other beings.  His book tells us the story of how a simple notion has created a profound change in his life.  I believe that Now and the world-view he has created around this notion work for Tolle.  Yet, in order for Tolle’s teaching to transcend the autobiographical and become the pedagogy he intends, we must extricate his important insight from his world-view just as we would shell peas from a pod to limit ourselves to the digestible.  There is just a bit more to Tolle’s writings than I am able to swallow.

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Andy Warhol’s oeuvre lays over the pond of American culture like a thin transparent film highlighting and abstracting those images, which float to the surface of the cultural consciousness.  Warhol scrubs these iconic images free of meaning and then allows them to drift away, like his silver pillows, as a tribute to the beauty of popular culture.

            Viewing Thomas Moran, we must contemplate a safari to search out beauty in the world.  With Warhol, all we need to do is click on the T.V or better yet, go shopping!  Warhol insisted that there was nothing special about his art; it was just something he liked to do.  Yet, when I allow the images of his varied and vast work to parade before me, I can’t help but believe that the “nothing” he gave us is indeed quite special. 

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