Given her latest post, and the nature of it, Raunchy is going to think that this is a Turq cafe rant about her, or even an attack on her personally. So will Edg, because I'm going to mention him specifically. But I don't think it is. It's a rant about (and...OK...an attack on) a *style of writing* that is very, very common in our era, and in spiritual circles, where logically it shouldn't be.
As an example of the kind of writing I'm talk- ing about (sorry in advance, Edg and Raunchy, but you two are the prime creators of this style of writing here, and so you spring to mind), think about Edg's rants when he gets all jizzed up emotionally about poor, abused women in strip clubs being predated upon by icky men. Think about how wound up he gets when he's ranting about kids dying of hunger or people victimized by the TM movement. Now think about how emotionally jizzed up Raunchy gets when she talks about sexism. And NOW think about how both of them react when no one reacts the way they expect them to to such rants. They get angry and disappointed. So WHY? What is *going on here* in this style of writing? What is its *intent*? Because it clearly *has* one, or the writers would not act so hurt and disappointed when the readers don't react as they expected them to. OK...here's my theory: Such writing is an attempt to SHARE MINDSTATES. It's an attempt to *shift the state of attention* of the reader, and force them to share the writer's state of attention. And, while this is admirable if the writer is in a *good* state of attention, it's less admirable when they aren't. The *intent* of such writing then becomes, "Here...read this. I want to bring you down to where I am, and I am not above using emotionally-manipulative language to do so." The biggest "offenders" when it comes to this kind of writing IMO, at least in the spiritual commun- ity, are those who have come to believe that over- whelming and overshadowing emotion *IS* a spiritual experience. They get all angry over the poor, abused strippers and interpret that as *righteous* anger, and thus spiritual. And they want to share it. Or they get angry (or weepy) about sexism and again, interpret this overwhelming emotion they feel as some kind of "high" or "spiritual" experience, and again, they want to share it. But the thing such writers don't seem to understand is that some of us don't view overwhelming emotion as a Good Thing. To us it's an indication that something is *out of balance* in the person who is not only in the throes of this overwhelming emotion, but wanting desperately to "share" it, to suck others into his or her current state of attention. They not only see nothing wrong with that current state of attention, they think its a Good Thing *because* it's so powerful and overwhelming for them, and they feel this need to "evangelize" the overwhelming emotion and the state of attention, and suck others into it. Some of us "others" don't see it as a Good Thing. We see overwhelming and overshadowing emotion -- and those who are trying to sell it via emotionally- manipulative writing -- as Not A Good Thing, because it's inviting people to drop into lower states of attention that have (in the long run, no matter how much of a cheap high the emotion is for a while) negative karma. And so we *don't* react as they expect us to. We *don't* get as weepy or angry as they are. We *don't* play "pile on" and jump on the emotional bandwagon. And the writers don't understand this. They get all hurt and offended, as if by *not* joining them in their state of attention we were rejecting *them*. We're not. We're rejecting their current overshadowed state of attention, which we know is *NOT* them. We are trying not to "feed" or encourage the overwhelm- ing state of attention by "piling on" to rants about it, and we're *damned sure* not going to encourage such overshadowed states of attention by wearing them ourselves. We'll just ignore the rant, thank you. We'll ignore the *intent* to suck us into that state of attention, and wait for the writer to come back to some kind of balance.
