Being Right
It may not be immediately apparent how complaining, say, about a traffic jam, about politicians, about the "greedy wealthy" or the "lazy unemployed," or your colleagues or ex-spouse, men or women, can give you a sense of superiority.
Here is why: When you complain, by implication you are right and the person or situation you complain about or react against is wrong.
There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position - a perspective, an opinion, a judgment, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, and so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right.
In other words: You need to make others wrong in order to get a stronger sense of who you are. Not only a person, but also a situation can be made wrong through complaining and reactivity, which always implies that "this should not be happening."
Being right places you in a position of imagined moral superiority in relation to the person or situation that is being judged and found wanting. It is that sense of superiority the ego craves and through which it enhances itself.
-- From "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle
BrotherFrancis
in Eastern Stuff, Eckhart Tolle, Excerpts
|
Post a Comment
Song By Ben Sollee
This is my favorite song (this week). And I like the dancers. I don't think the song & the dancers go together necessarily, but at least I can offer you the CD version of the song: "It's Not Impossible".
"It's not impossiblefor me to cry,
It's just the hardest thing I've ever done."
BrotherFrancis
in Ben Sollee, Music
|
Post a Comment
Some Truth About Health Care Debate
Universal health care is something any decent, wealthy society shouldn't even have to think twice about. It's a global embarrassment that the United States, the chest thumping superpower, is even having this debate at this late date. It's equally embarrassing that we have put together a Frankenstein of a system because our democratic government is in league with wealthy interests which are exploiting its people. It's hard to believe that anyone would call that system liberal, much less socialist, but as you can see every day on Fox News, it's set off a tantrum among a vocal minority that would hardly be less hysterical if aliens from a foreign planet landed in Washington. (And that hysteria is also a tool of the permanent establishment, funded by big money, and used as a way of keeping the debate focused on the right, even if it's taking on an absurdist quality.)
- Digby, AlterNet
BrotherFrancis
in Excerpts, Politics
|
Post a Comment
Outside
From Andrew Sullivan's View From Your Window series.
Desire
The problem is not desire. It is that your desires are too small.
- Sri Nisargadatta
BrotherFrancis
in Eastern Stuff, Quotations
|
Post a Comment
