Abundance vs. scarcity. Positive vs. negative. Loving vs. fearful. Healthy vs. sick. Each of these dichotomies represent (among many things) possible attitudes that we may adopt during the course of our lives. The tendency is to qualify one as better, more desirable, or more enlightened than the other.
For example, "The Secret", a popular book and movie, espouses an abundance mentality, replete with positive thinking, and a belief in the "law of attraction" as the secret to success in all areas of ones life. If an individual comes upon this material and finds it to be helpful, great! However, the downside is that this belief system is extremely reductionist and can also be inappropriate and insensitive.
A mother who loses her child to a violent criminal, victims of genocide, and those subject to the numerous atrocities that take place each day on this planet are not asking for these things to happen to them. To place the responsibility of these events on the victim is ignorant at best.
Things happen, life can be brutal, and fortune does not always smile upon us and while we can cultivate our own best attitude according to our own needs it is incumbent upon us to focus on just that, our own needs. Trying to explain all of the happenings of our life with one convenient theory may be appealing, but, like all life and existence, Truth is shrouded in a veil mystery that refuses to be dispelled.
Thank you for articulating the cognitive dissonance I experience w/oversimplified, smug certainies explaining away mysteries of life, that I believe, are not meant to be "explained." Ignorant AND insulting at best. For me, a more authentic path to truth lies in acceptance, both in what we can know and what we human beings in our limited state of consciousness are not capable of knowing. "Man cannot walk the path to wisdom until he first accepts his own ignorance."
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