But Self-Help Is Boring

I'm guessing most with a propensity to seek out self-help books go on the same rollercoaster ride as I do. First, there's the inciting incident: that which tells us, "I gotta read one of those books again. I always feel good when I do. & I haven't in a while. Let's blame my unhappiness on not reading enough self help books."

Then you read a few pages of a self-help book, but it's not your first, so it's something obscure like Teillhard de Chardin or secret manuscripts of Meister Eckhart Tolle (sic).

For a time, just reading positive affirmations, being positive, this is enough to fix the problem we were hoping the self help book would fix. A new problem emerges, however, for the person who's read dozens of these things -- "the yeah, yeah, yeahs" problem.

As in, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard this all before. And it works. And it's great. For a while. But even the books themselves (some of them), and the real philosophers and geniuses whose works these self-help books are based around, admit to an incompleteness."

 Complain about metaphysics as much as you want, when all is said and done, if we're all enlightened, it might just be the boringest thing ever. You, at your most enlightened, are inclined to boredom, to sleep even. There is no arrival, for the enlightened -- just a choice. Go back with your enlightenment into the world that is wall to wall shit (be a bodhisaatva), in order to instruct. Or bliss out, monk out, in essence make yourself indistinguishable from a heroin addict.

Any alternative would also be based on a metaphysics. There can be no such thing as an enlightened atheist or agnostic. At that point, I bet dollars to donuts, all you think about is metaphysics.

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Also, dollars to donuts, even the enlightened badasses need to be refreshed from time to time of all that is positive, whilst surrounded by shit, wall to wall.

Without further ado, the self-help article link of the day.