--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "mainstream20016" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > A friend is having very good experiences as a brand > new TM meditator. I think I recall from an SCI Course > tape that a new meditator will remain regular in his > TM practise if the new meditator is inspired by, and > incorporates, a vision of his future established in > higher states of consciousness. > What would you suggest to a new meditator that might > mitigate the tendency of new meditators to abandon the > practice ?
It's probably best to stick with the "standards," the things that have worked in the past. Residence courses, for example. Get your friend to a weekend or week-long residence course, where he will be told that he cannot leave the facility during the course or Bad Things might happen to him, and during which every moment of his life is carefully planned for him. The discipline of being subject to being thrown off the course at any moment for missing a meeting -- in which you are to sit quietly staring raptly into a TV monitor while indoctrination tapes are played -- will add an element of regimentation and by-rote training to his TM practice. Also, the discussions of these tapes will add to his understanding of how to approach the ideas that support the practice -- you are to listen quietly and appreciatively to the explanations given to you by Those Who Know More Than You Do, and never question anything that is said. The stern looks given to anyone who does not will reinforce the "proper attitude," and the regimentation of the course itself, with its care- fully-calculated atmosphere of fear of being thrown off the course at any moment for some unidentified infraction, will cultivate the proper motivation to continue the TM practice. More seriously, think about what you are saying. If you feel that the TM practice does not, in itself, provide enough benefits to the new practitioner that they will want to continue it on their own *without* reinforcement of some kind, how good is it? On my last trip back through Hartford, Connecticut some time ago, I ran into by chance several people who had attended the free meditation classes I once taught there for Rama. That was 10 years previously. Three of these people had attended only one session, in which they were taught to meditate -- by me, not by someone with a shitload of darshan or tradition going for them -- for free, and then never came back for any followup sessions. The last two actually liked the meetings, and kept coming back for several weeks, even though it was the same intro material and free meditation training every week. All five claimed to still be practicing what we taught them. Go figure, eh? Seems to me that if the "best," most effective technique of meditation on the planet (that IS how it's billed, right?) needs some kind of crutch to make it "stick," it's already limping.
