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I Am a Smartass

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now:

“Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time. Even a brief illness or an accident can show you what is real and unreal in your life, what ultimately matters and what doesn’t.

Seen from a higher perspective, conditions are always positive. To be more precise: they are neither positive nor negative.”

My smart-ass response:

It’s still bad. You’re just not allowed to call it bad.

“Differently good”, maybe? “Alternative good”?

Yes, I know I have an attitude problem, ha ha.
SwampFlower · 31-35, F
Ahh the intellectual pursuit of putting lipstick on pigs. Not my style either. 🚫🐖💄
SmartKat · 56-60, F
@SwampFlower If you read more of the book, it starts to make sense, and I can see the wisdom in it. But that little paragraph did trigger my inner rebellious teenager!
SW-User
@SmartKat you should read Eric Berne to look at that aspect of your personality 😂
SmartKat · 56-60, F
@SW-User Well, I am also allergic to bullshit. So, there’s that! 😂
uncalled4 · 56-60, M
I'm inclined to dislike Tolle because my crazy, narcissistic ex used to live and die by his words. This, however, gives me a perfect excuse to legitimiately dislike him.

Let's face it, there are cruel, cruel things that happen to everyone, and I have no use for a pseudointellectual hack like Tolle. I minored in philosophy. Shifting context changes everything. ALL information is understood within a context.

Once you accept that, you can see what snake-oil bullshit Tolle's concept is.

News flash, to Tolle and anyone else: bad things happen. To everyone. Tough shit. It's devoid of meaning sometimes. No one knows why. Stop pretending you have an explanation, because you don't. Making light of people's suffering can be said to take its Tolle.

I'd go on, but I wouldn't be nice.
SmartKat · 56-60, F
@uncalled4 Well, he’s making the point that you can make yourself feel worse about bad things by emphasizing how awful it is, and overlooking good things in your life. Up to a point, he’s right. If someone cuts me off in traffic, that’s bad. But it’s temporary, and it’s usually pretty minor. (If it causes an accident, that’s a worse degree of bad; but still usually temporary and fixable.)

When my mother died, that was BAD. You could argue that it meant she was no longer in pain. But IMHO, that still doesn’t make it good. “Good” would have been if she’d never gotten sick and then lived another 20 years. The choice here was between “bad” (death) and “worse” (living in pain, unable to function.) There was no “good” to be had in that situation.

I’m somewhat of a philosopher, ha ha.

 
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