28.2.08

*Updated* Bouncing Back with a Tag

After a longish blogging break in the weeks leading up to Tuesday and yesterday's bar exam, it's nice to reemerge with a tag from Chicory.

Grab the book nearest to you, open it up, and turn it to page 123. Write down the first 5 sentences on that page. Then tag 5 more people. [*This post is updated because I didn't properly follow the directions and only listed five lines instead of five sentences. Doh.*]

The book closest to me in this moment is Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, a title with much serendipity for me lately. In one day I saw it at two people's houses, exclaimed that it was the next book I was going to read after the bar exam, and also learned that Oprah is doing a free ten-week online course with Eckhart Tolle starting 3/3 (see www.oprah.com). Having been unplugged from TV for several years, I was totally out of this Oprah loop until someone told me this news, but I am so excited to see that television and online media is being used in these powerful ways! Because the course is online, I'm absolutely going to sign up! The first full five sentences on page 123, from the chapter entitled "Role-Playing: The Many Faces of the Ego":
There is a "me" that feels personally offended or resentful, and a huge amount of energy is burned up in useless protest or anger, energy that could be used for solving the situation if it were not being misused by the ego. What is more, this "anti"-energy creates new obstacles, new opposition. May people are truly their own worst enemy.
- People unknowingly sabotage their own work when they withhold help or information from others or try to undermine them lest they become more successful or get more credit than "me." Cooperation is alien to the ego, except when there is a secondary motive.
And now, I hereby tag Jehara, Lori, Derick, Zilla, and LeviZoe.

* * *

4 comments:

Keri said...

Glad to see you back here. I hope nothing I did created any "ick" for you.
I've been thinking about that book and have heard very good things. Maybe I'll dial up Oprah too. :)
Hope you are well.

Jennifer said...

Interesting. I read Chicory's tag yesterday, I think. On the phone with an out of town girlfriend tonight, I asked her to do the same thing: read to me the first five sentences of the book closest to her. Get this: the book was A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. The sentences she read, though, didn't sound anything like the ones you've transcribed here.

She's like that. Sometimes, she gives what she thinks I need, rather than what I ask for.

I almost did this tag without being tagged, but I was sitting at MrZ's desk while I was reading Chicory, and the closest book was a baseball encyclopedia: The era of baseball marked by the greatest stability the game has ever known, was ushered in by the ouster of the eight Chicago White Sox players. I had to look up "ouster," and ended up doing that dictionary thing, where one word leads to an even better word, and then another word after that, and suddenly the morning's gone, and guilt is setting in, and, well, have you ever had a morning like that?

I still don't understand "ouster" in the context of baseball.

Anonymous said...

So glad you are back, too! Congrats on clearing your hurdle and on having picked up this tremendous book. I hope you'll join the discussions at Gather and that I'll get to read more of your reactions to this amazing book.

LeviZoe said...

thanks for the post -- it gave me something fun to post about --

now I just gotta finish the chapter to get to the punch line

glad to see all is well