By Cathy Eck

The Shitty Advisor of Venice Beach

While walking on Venice Beach, I came across the shitty advisor.  Of course, I paid my dollar.  He explained how I could efficiently get eaten by a shark.  That was pretty shitty advice since I’m not interested in being eaten by a shark.

However, I kind of admired the guy; at least he was honest.  Yes, he gave me shitty advice that I didn’t need and would never need.  But he warned me that his advice was shitty; so we had a good laugh together.

He also didn’t give me confusing advice; in fact, his logic was perfect.  I suspect that if I followed his advice, I would get eaten by a shark.  He gave me what I paid for — worthless, shitty advice.  I got my money’s worth.  In fact, I got a bargain.

Over the course of my life, many well-meaning people have given me advice that was really shitty; but they believed their shitty advice was true.  Because they didn’t realize their advice was shitty, they expected me to follow it; and we missed out on the laugh.

Top Twelve Pieces of Truly Shitty Advice

So here are twelve pieces of truly shitty advice that I’ve received.  You’ve probably heard them too.  Have a laugh on me.  I won’t even charge you a dollar.

1)  If it feels bad, it’s true.  Imagine if tomorrow you walked into the doctor and he said, “You’re dying.”  Then you laughed and said, “You’re lying.”  What if you were so clear that when someone told you something that didn’t feel good, you didn’t believe them at all — not even a little.  Well then you would be truly free!

2) The Bible was written by God.  God doesn’t write; people do.  The Bible was written by people who would probably be called channels today.  Channels mix some truth with some lies because they are human; and if we aren’t watching closely, we don’t notice the lies.  The God of the Old Testament killed, cursed, smited (whatever that is), and caused people to get lost in the desert and drowned by floods.  If that is God, then I don’t want a damn thing to do with him.

2)  Get a good education; it makes you smarter.  Actually, it made me stupider, less wise.  Education causes us to blindly believe things that aren’t true.  It causes us to look outside for answers instead of inside.  Of course, it took me getting a Ph.D. to realize that.

3)  Emotions are bad.  Emotions are not bad; they are our greatest gift.  They’re labeled bad because emotions expose beliefs, lies.  We aren’t good followers or slaves if our emotional system of discrimination is working because we don’t believe liars.

4)  Love is finding our other half.   This one cost me dearly.  We don’t have another half to find because we are born whole.  The best we can do is co-create with another, but only if we don’t lose our True Self in the relationship because we think we are half.

5)  It was Eve’s fault.  You’ll have to wait for my book on this one.  Truth is, it was Adam’s fault.

6)  The truth hurts.  Nope!  The truth will set you free if you listen to it.

7)  They did the best that they could.  One could say that they (whoever they is) did the best they could given their beliefs.  But when we have beliefs, we never do our best.  In reality, this has become the coward’s way of saying, “They are too fucking brainwashed to change, and they make me want to vomit; but if I said that I’d look bad.”

8)  If you see it, believe it.  That is backwards.  In truth, if you believe it, eventually you will see it.

9)  It is only your imagination.  People love to tell me that my ideas of peace, freedom, and love with no opposite are imaginary.   Well, it turns out that when you let go, you discover that the people who think I’m living in la la land are actually the ones stuck in their imagination.  They believe a really negative imaginary vision that includes war, religious nut heads, bigotry, disease, and poverty; and they see what they believe.

10)  Life is complicated.  When I can’t tell if someone is telling the truth, I often look to see if what they’re saying is simple or complicated.  The illusion is so complex (like our tax system).  The truth is always simple.

11)  Others know what is best for us.  Nothing is better than the advice of our own True Self.  It never gives shitty advice.  Others, however, usually give shitty advice.  The more they charge, the shittier the advice.

12)  We need to learn the truth.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We have all the truth we could ever need waiting to speak its mind underneath all that shitty advice.

I Could Go On and On…

There’s lots of shitty advice out there.  Most of the shitty advisors charge a lot more than a $1.  Most people pay doctors, therapists, clergy, and lawyers small fortunes when they could let go of their beliefs (and problems) for free.

We are programmed to listen to shitty advice by the authorities that benefit by it.  “Follow the money.”  Keeping shitty advice alive might make people rich, but it won’t set them free.  If people really knew they could have freedom, they’d laugh at the shitty advice instead of believing it.

I rather like my Venice Beach shitty advisor.  I’ll probably go back to see him again the next time I’m in the area.  Meeting a man who admitted straight up that his advice was shitty was clearly worth a buck.

While we’re on the topic, here are my top ten biggest lies ever told.