[Maguru]

Originally Posted by SonoranBob

[chuckle] Driving you batsh_t isn't it?

YES!!

Angela, it would seem, is blessed with an extraordinary ability to choose her feelings, probably in part because her veins flow with generous amounts of dopamine. In my view she makes a mistake in generalizing this to those of us who are less easily amused.

Actually I don't disagree with Angela; theoretically, yes, despite relative degrees of difficulty that even she acknowledges at least in passing, anyone at any time can choose to (dis)believe any story and thus transcend suffering.

But I agree with her only theoretically. I have known people with all sorts of shorted out circuitry cabinets in their heads, lousy control of thoughts and emotions, and what they need is compassion and mercy, not a lecture about how they should quit choosing their stories. They can't even sort out stories from reality half the time.

Even if you have fairly ordered thinking, everyone has some kind of line in the sand that, if your experience takes you beyond it, you can easily spend years coming to terms with it, and to suggest that you should just flip a switch and "decide" to accept it can be very premature and counterproductive. You can only process so much change, loss, or whatever at once. Short circuiting that process can actually deny you growth opportunities. You don't want to take half-baked bread out of the oven.

Every once in awhile someone like Ekhart Tolle or Byron Katie makes a quantum leap because they come to the end of themselves. But, for every Ekhart or Byron I suspect there are at least a score of nameless people who simply passed into madness. They don't survive to write books and develop a following. And there are others who resolved their suffering only with much time and discipline.

Your understanding moves me to tears.

In the messy world of actual people and real world circumstances, you can't always tie everything up in a bow and sprinkle happy dust on it and make it go away. And you can't explain difficulties entirely in terms of resistance or laziness or a fondness for self limiting thoughts.

Would that life were that simple ...

--Bob

My sentiments exactly.