"While many people are trying to be in tune with infinite, what they really are is in tune with the indefinite"
About this Quote
Butterworth is puncturing a very American kind of spiritual ambition: the urge to sound cosmic without doing the harder work of becoming clear. “In tune with infinite” evokes the polished promise of metaphysics - the idea that you can align with boundless truth, purpose, God, the universe, whatever capital-I Ideal you prefer. It’s aspirational, clean, and flattering. Then he flips it: most of us, he suggests, aren’t harmonizing with the infinite at all. We’re vibing with the indefinite - vague feelings, half-formed beliefs, motivational mist.
The intent is corrective, not cruel. As an educator (and, in his broader career, a popularizer of New Thought-style spirituality), Butterworth is policing the border between insight and fuzziness. The subtext: your language can be expansive while your thinking is evasive. “Indefinite” isn’t simply “unknown”; it’s conveniently unspecific. It’s the psychic equivalent of a soft-focus Instagram filter: it feels profound because it doesn’t have to be tested against reality, discipline, or consequence.
The line works because it’s built on a near-rhyme and a near-duplicate structure. Infinite/indefinite are close enough to be confused, and that’s the point: people mistake emotional uplift for spiritual precision. In the late-20th-century self-improvement ecosystem Butterworth inhabited, this is a quiet warning against spiritual bypassing - using big metaphysical talk to avoid choices, commitments, and the discomfort of actually defining what you believe and how you’ll live it.
The intent is corrective, not cruel. As an educator (and, in his broader career, a popularizer of New Thought-style spirituality), Butterworth is policing the border between insight and fuzziness. The subtext: your language can be expansive while your thinking is evasive. “Indefinite” isn’t simply “unknown”; it’s conveniently unspecific. It’s the psychic equivalent of a soft-focus Instagram filter: it feels profound because it doesn’t have to be tested against reality, discipline, or consequence.
The line works because it’s built on a near-rhyme and a near-duplicate structure. Infinite/indefinite are close enough to be confused, and that’s the point: people mistake emotional uplift for spiritual precision. In the late-20th-century self-improvement ecosystem Butterworth inhabited, this is a quiet warning against spiritual bypassing - using big metaphysical talk to avoid choices, commitments, and the discomfort of actually defining what you believe and how you’ll live it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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