Wayne Dyer and the conflict between positive psychology and meditation

The American self-help guru, Wayne Dyer, is an example of how the self-help industry is trying to combine the ideals of modern management theory (to be a success, a winner, a perfect human being) with meditation. Management theory is influenced by the American New Thought movement, which today also is known as Positive Psychology, where the “positive” again is understood as being perfect, a success and a winner.

Wayne Dyer says that: “there is nothing wrong in perceiving yourself as perfect”, and “don´t be afraid of your own greatness”.

Dyer says: “I have myself experienced, that you can live totally in the now, and I therefore know, that it is true”

This sounds like meditation, but remember, that there is a big difference between instinctive reactions from the past, and being in the Now. Being in the Now can´t be without self-forgetful absorption in the Otherness, or in the wholeness. You are certaintly not a person able to be completely in the Now, if you also are focusing on your own greatness and perfectionism.

What Dyer, and the self-help industry misunderstand, is that meditation functions contrabalancing. The eternal circling around your own dreams, desires, success etc., will in other words be contra-balanced through the opposite categories (the teachings of New Thought, Positive Psychology, etc., are directly about ignoring what you find negative; that is: ignoring the opposite categories. For example in the Positive Psychology guru, Rhonda Byrne´s famous words about that you should avoid observing fat people, if you as a woman want to be slim).

The personal development movement here exposes itself, and its followers, for the possibility of Nemesis – (if you don´t end up as the modern psychopath, who is extremely self-centered, and experiencing herself as smarter than most, and where the conception of her own abilities and importance are unrealistic exaggerated).

An example: as soon as your thoughts spread themselves too much out in an extreme, the energy-system – which meditation activates - compensates by seeking to bring itself back to the balance of the middle. The system does this by seeking over towards the opposite extreme (for instance from perfectionism to feeling of fiasco). That is: through a contrabalancing, a compensation. The energy works as a pendulum. The more energy, which is invested in the one extreme of a pair of opposites, the larger the swing in the opposite direction becomes.

Now, if you test the personal development theories in relation to this law, then the law will say: the ideals about power/perfectionism/success only exist in relation to their opposites, namely powerlessness, fiasco, loss.

If you are extremely occupied by your own success, the system will seek to balance your thoughts by bringing them over in the opposite extreme, namely the powerlessness and the fiasco. It is therefore evident, that these modern ideals about being a success and a winner are participating in creating a swing over in stress, anxiety and depression.

Related article:

Humanistic psychology, self-help, and the danger of reducing religion to psychology