One evening after work a few years ago, I was driving home in the middle of rush hour, and suddenly noticed that there were very few other cars around, and that I was getting a lot more green lights than usual. At the time, I wondered if I had unwittingly entered a parallel universe. It turns out that I did, and that the parallel universe even has a name: Easy World.
Getting to Easy World seems easy enough at first glance: "I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy." Just say that, breathe, relax, allow and enjoy. There's a catch: you have to leave a few things behind in order to stay in Easy World. No, not your money or possessions, it's actually a lot worse than that. You have to leave behind your fears, worries, anger, and (this is the one most of us will have a problem with) negative judgements.
Those of you who are fans of A Course in Miracles or who study Taoism will find yourselves in familiar territory here. So is the book a waste of time? Why not just buy, for example, the Tao Te Ching?
Here's why: the Tao Te Ching is a great book, but it was written a very long time ago, for people of a different culture, in a different language. I'm sure a Westerner could understand it to a degree after years of study, but I'm even more sure that it wouldn't be to the same level as someone who lived in China when it was originally written. The great books and myths of the past have to be restated periodically in current language and culture. Choosing Easy World is a perfect example of why: anyone can read this book and get the basic point right way, and they are automatically on the path just by trying to stay in Easy World for as long and as often as possible.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
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