Your assessment is fair. I’ve never read anything by Tolle, but I’m sure I’ve read things influenced by the same thought process. I do believe in some of the core tenets of the philosophy, but you are correct to point out that it can tend to a “head in the sand” stance towards real suffering.

My argument against that stance goes something like this: Yes, we may be fundamentally consciousness and consciousness may be pervasive in all things (panpsychism), but that dodges the question of why are there subjective viewpoints and subjective embodied beings to begin with? We can try to understand and embrace our nature as pure consciousness, but that doesn’t completely “free” us from the facts of our human condition. We’re still alive, breathing, and experiencing this reality from a human perspective.

We feel and experience and suffer and laugh for a reason. It may be part of a divine plan, but I’m just as okay with it being a divine accident. I don’t believe there was any intention from a Creator/Creation to specifically create humans on this particular planet. I think it’s more of a general intention to spread and expand what is possible, in whatever way possible, and to become aware of itself through our subjective experiences.

Where does that leave us mere mortals and what does that do for our search for meaning? I can’t answer that for anyone but myself.