--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Robert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > A President Like My Father > By CAROLINE KENNEDY > All my life, people have told me that my father changed > their lives, that they got involved in public service or > politics because he asked them to. And the generation he > inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet > young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was > president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals. > Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has > a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to > tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that > together we can do great things. In those rare moments, > when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our > plans and reach for what we know is possible.
<snip> the rest. You get the point. Ms. Kennedy feels the same breath of fresh air coming from Barack Obama that I do, that all-important Ability To Inspire. I've been thinking about this ability a lot lately, as a result of posts on this forum and others. On each of them, one or more people have attempted to "Declare Things True." They stood up on their key- board soap boxes and screamed out, "This is what is true. This other stuff that these other people here are saying is NOT true. And the fact that they're saying it means that they're low-vibe, unevolved poopypants doo-doo heads." I made the last part about the poopypants and doo- doo heads up; the Declare Things True types used... uh...more colorful and scatalogical language. They threw as many F-bombs into their declarations of what they think Truth is as humanly possible. And ya know what? No one paid a *damned* bit of attention to them. Oh, a few folks shrugged and said to themselves, "Oh, *he's* back again...still as enlightened as ever, still declaring that he knows the Truth about things and that no one else does." A few hurled a few F-bombs back, and then forgot about the Declare Things True type completely, because he or she had made absolutely zero impact on their lives. He or she had accomplished NOTHING by trying to declare the truth about something or by claiming "special" knowledge or insight about something. I watched this same phenomenon play itself out on three or four different forums this last week, always exactly the same, and always with the same ending. The person trying to be a "leader" or a "guru" and to get folks to listen to him or her and treat his or her words as if they were "special" or as if they came straight from God just got ignored, or laughed at. And why? Because of what Caroline Kennedy says in this article about her father, and about Barack Obama. None of these wannabee gurus ever had a ghost of a chance to change anyone's life, because none of them have a clue as to How To Inspire. *That* is a special gift, one that cannot easily be defined, but that we can all feel when we encounter it. One of the reasons we're all feeling a little con- flicted right now as Maharishi passes from the scene is that -- whatever we may think of him and his accomp- lishments or lack thereof -- he once inspired us. Most of us "got on the bus" of the TM movement way back when BECAUSE he inspired us. People have been talking here about what it would take to "get more initiations," to have more people learn TM. I agree with those who don't think that lowering the price would help a damn bit. I suspect that you couldn't get most people in the general public to learn TM these days if you paid *them* to learn it. And why? Because there is no one in the TM movement who can INSPIRE, or who IS inspired. The people who flocked to learn TM by the thousands in the 70s weren't coming because of the intro lectures and the scientific studies. They were coming because of US, the teachers. We were fuckin' INSPIRED! And people had really not SEEN all that much inspiration around them at that point, so they were attracted to it. They saw us silly short-haired ex-hippies in our cheap suits and our big smiles and they *wanted* some of whatever was making us smile like that. That's what people saw and flocked to in the halcyon days of the TM movement -- inspiration. That's what they saw and flocked to in JFK, and what they see and respond to in Barack Obama. And it's what they DON'T see in the TM movement, in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and in *any* of the people who represent the TM movement at this point. Not one of them could inspire a Newage blissninny with no dis- crimination and who is a pushover for anything with "god" or "bliss" in it, much *less* someone who lives in the real world. Those who talk nobly about wanting to "change" the TM movement, to make it better or more responsive, to get it "back to what it was" -- they're all missing the point too as far as I can tell. *They* aren't inspired, either...they're frustrated. So the people they talk to and hope to get on "change the TMO" band- wagon with them sense the frustration, and the *same* amount of inspiration that they feel from the TMO itself -- none. Wanna change the world? Find something that inspires the hell out of you, and then go forth and spread that inspiration. Nothing else works. Nothing else ever has, and IMO nothing else ever will.
