I just love it when Barry decides to deliver the opinions we all know and love about something he hasn't read being discussed in a thread he hasn't been following.
In fact, of course, one of Ehrenreich's major realizations--and reasons she wrote the Times essay and the book--was that she discovered that her experience wasn't "special," that very large numbers of people throughout history have had such experiences. Oooooooopsie! Don't ever change, Barry. It's too damn much fun to puncture the balloon of your Self-Important Specialness. People are willing to come up with so many twisted theories to explain *their* mystical experience. And as far as I can tell, all of this is driven by self-importance. They're declaring "My experience was SPECIAL" (and of course, silently saying "And so am I"), and they're desperate for any way to "prove" it. What such people are unable to cope with is someone hearing about "their experience" and saying, "No, it's not special at all, and neither are you."
