Suffering makes us all the same, my precious

Even 'no-ego' gurus get captured by their own egos.

Expat Alex Hazlehurt's jobless ordeal is totally valid.

I woke up one day last week and realised my kids were cheerful (if weather forecast good), I had no crushing deadlines or impending personal crises, incapacitating dread seemed to have slunk off to terrorise some other poor sod for a bit, I was not sick or hungover or despairing, and perhaps the worst thing I had to deal with was my son's fear of clouds. So I was feeling pretty chipper as I cheerfully wombled off to hear a talk by visiting guru Wayne Dyer.

I didn't know anything about him but his book Your Erroneous Zones sold 35 million copies so I figured he would have something useful to say. The pre-show crowd seemed to be mainly post-menopausal women in quirky scarves. We had great tickets, bang smack in the middle of the Aotea Centre from which hmmm, well, just saying, you can't easily sneak out.

Dyer, 75, shimmied on to the stage in a guru costume: beret and linen shirt and beads, with his hands in a praying gesture of humility. He started off talking about letting go of one's ego - you are not what you achieve or acquire - we are all little specks of Nasa space dust - cheesy, but hey, it was what we were there for.

But he proceeded to go on about how many millions of books he had sold, how dazzlingly well-read he was, how he used his brilliant mind to get rid of his cancer, how hard it is being a globe-trotting guru travelling around the world. He does everything himself, you know, he's ever-so-humble!

Except, ahem, for having a personal assistant who attends to his every need and makes him special green smoothies. Because his body is a temple. (David Lange: "My body is a warehouse.")

I stopped listening about then: but how to get out without appearing to be a Buddhism-for-dummies denier? Finally, when Dyer got his daughter on the stage to talk about how happy thoughts got rid of her warts, it was too much. "Sorry, sorry, need the loo, so sorry, UTI, so sorry." When I got out I felt dizzy with relief, but confused. I know, right? So even this man who has made millions preaching about lack of ego has been captured by his ego. It seems our rampant ego - "special snowflake" disease - can affect the best of us. I'm reading the book by the academic who invented the concept of self-compassion and even she was gleefully mean about Paris Hilton.

One of my heroes, vulnerability researcher Brene Brown, in her latest book Rising Strong, published last week, has changed. She used to just be an aw-shucks social-work teacher, but now she is a "phenomenon" who swaggers about being pals with Hollywood executives. Her TED talk has been watched 21 million times and now she has a network of certified Daring Way Helping Professionals (I would insert a TM symbol here if I knew how to do it.)

All this annoys me, for some reason, although why is still a mystery to me. I loved her work, but turns out I agree with the person who said the biggest challenge after success was shutting up about it. Or maybe I just have a dark, mean-spirited soul.

I know London jobseeker Alex Hazlehurst - "I'm talented. I'm hard-working. I'm blonde" - is probably not an entitled princess. But even if she was, so what? Who's to say her suffering is not just as valid as anyone else's? Maybe being kind in one direction, down the pecking order, is entwined with our deep-seated class antagonism.

Writer Geoff Dyer (unlikely to be related to Wayne) says he has not had children specifically because if he did, the kid would be middle-class: "The kind of child on whose behalf I'd make calls to friends at the Guardian or Faber and Faber about a possible internship."

I know what he means. (Fortunately, my daughter wants to be a taxi driver. ) I am happy to be in the special needs group, to feel empathy for the homeless, to hand over all my change to traffic lights window-washers. ("Wicked, Miss!")

Yet, I don't find it so easy to feel gentle towards supermodels having a hard Fashion Week or kind to bestselling gurus with their own problems. This is even though I know absolutely no one has an easy life. Rich people have their own problems; they have to protect their privilege and follow the rules of their shitty, civilised life.

Do we find it hard to feel compassion up the pecking order - for those more successful or powerful than us - because we erroneously think it's a finite commodity and if we're kind to someone who has costly highlights, there's less for kids without lunch? Or is it because when someone else treats themselves as if they were precious and worthy - where's my special job? - it makes the child inside us cry: "What about me? I'm a special snowflake too. I'm worthy too." Thing is, darling, we all are.

Wayne Dyer, author and motivational speaker, died on Sunday, August 30. This article was written and published before the announcement of his death.