Saturday, April 4, 2020

Commercial Break: Facing Fear and Going Deeper in The Present Distress

I recognize that digging deeper within the self is not most of us were ever taught to think about much less do.  The solution to fear was faith and trust in the future.  But we don't actually live in the future. I believe we can't really know the future.  I believe it is what we think we can do or feel the need to do to answer the fearful question "What's going to happen to me and us?"  It might feel good but it does not actually address how to live  and think in the present distress. 

I realize this is not for everyone here of course. And while my personal journey in, through and out of the Worldwide Church of God and all the experiences it brought me personally, we all handle the lessons learned differently depending. We all will process the present distress differently depending. We also go through the stages of anger, denial, bargaining and acceptance. We go through them in different orders. We get stuck in them at times for a very long time. Sometimes forever.  

I hope this is encouraging during these times to some who understand that the present moment is all one actually has in our lives that is real and while looking forward, according to one's faith, may help, it also may be a form of denial and not all that helpful in addressing the fears that are very real in this very real circumstance we all face no matter the politics and opinions about how we got here.

I realize we also tend towards short attention span theater there but a couple of presentations to consider in all the time we all now have to process our concerns, situations and fears as we watch what we cannot control unfold.





There is another way


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you vacuum the jewelry store, you can open the vacuum bag and find an occasional gem among the lint and dirt.

Tolle has vacuumed up all sorts of mutually contradictory teachings to come up with his self-made philosophy of life, which is sort of an intellectually inconsistent "baby version" of Advaita Vedanta, keeping the ego-enhancing bits while not exposing students to the challenges and complications brought out by the real teachings from which he has sampled.

If you find Tolle comforting or otherwise appealing, PLEASE don't remain satisfied with his lightweight and inauthentic claptrap. Go to the sources he's bowdlerizing, and expose yourself directly to Rumi, Marcus Aurelius, Meister Eckhart, instead of to Tolle, a veritable simpering Dr. Seuss of spirituality.

DennisCDiehl said...

I suspected the first comment of many to be a lecture. You did not disappoint.

Anonymous said...

Meister Eckhart or Eckehart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic....

Yes, all you religious people, study under a mystic you heathen scum!

People are just nasty to you Dennis because they see you as a threat to their ever failing religious movement. And fail it will.

Byker Bob said...

Hopefully this will help some people.

One of the persistent side effects left by Armstrongism is the debilitation or atrophy of the psyche to the extent that members require a guru in their lives. I guess Tolle could be that guy as people transition.

BB

Anonymous said...

Dennis wrote:

I suspected the first comment of many to be a lecture. You did not disappoint.

Well, Dennis didn’t get his expected “many” comments. I hope he understands why, even though the topic has been up for more than a day, there are just three comments other than his own, when much more ordinary threads nearby have dozens of replies and actual discussions taking place.

This thread had promise. Dennis, who normally speaks out against woo, has apparently found in Tolle a woo-purveyor whose stuff he appreciates, and he wanted to share that with us. That sounds like an interesting conversation starter, doesn’t it?

Dennis is usually the one who calls out other posters for promoting woo, so it was interesting to see a poster calling him out in the thread’s first comment, making what seemed like a credible comment about the lightweight nature of Tolle’s material.

So, what did Dennis do? He didn’t defend Tolle’s substance or ask the other poster why he preferred Rumi’s. Instead, he smacked the poster down for “lecturing” — which is exactly what Dennis himself had been doing. If Dennis wanted to discuss with us, rather than minister to us, why didn't he ask the poster for specifics: “Why do you think Rumi is preferable to Tolle?” Or maybe he could have asked, very legitimately, “Why do you think there’s something wrong with Dr. Seuss?” I would rather read “Green Eggs and Ham” than any booklet by WCG or a splinter.

Instead, Dennis made a dismissive comment that pretty much shut down any prospect of interesting exchange among posters. Apparently, thinking highly of Tolle and agreeing with Dennis’ perspective were the only acceptable responses.

Dennis’ smug dismissal meant not only that the usual woo-lovers wouldn't feel welcomed to chime in to promote their different woo, but also that the folks who usually share Dennis’s anti-woo perspective wouldn’t feel comfortable making a contrary comment.

But at least nobody else dared to try to lecture back to Dennis. I hope he’s comfortable rather than lonely in his self-created bubble.

Anonymous said...

4:48am Calling himself "a poster" "other poster" "the poster" when we all know that 4:48am is the original 6:56am poster defending himself.

Is that considered blog masterbation?

Anonymous said...

@ 10:34 AM, it's no different than you failing to sign your post as Dennis.

Anonymous said...

10:34am Wasn't Dennis!

km