I have written before on the difference between talking the talk of one's spiritual path and walking the walk of it. And yes, as some have said, I have written about it enough that they claim to find it boring. I think that a larger reason than "boring" for the people saying this might be "I couldn't find a way to refute it the first time and I can't find one now, so I'm going to call it 'boring' in hopes that he'll stop saying it." :-)
This supposed "meeting of the Trustees" going on right now in Fairfield is, from my point of view, as boring and pre- dictable as all other such meetings in the past, and is probably doomed to having the same effect -- that is, none. The reason IMO is that they're going to focus on talking the talk of the supposed benefits of TM and the TMSP, and pay no attention whatsoever to walking the walk of those benefits. They'll emerge from this "emergency meeting" with a rewritten sales brochure, and feel that is enough to solve the "problem." The "problem," as I see it, is that these folks have been in the business of talking the talk so long that they have forgotten what made TM popular in the first place. It was *not* the sales brochures; it was the people *passing out* the sales brochures. They were *excited* about their lives. They (we) had found something that (especially in that era) promised "happiness without the chemical crutch." The sales brochures didn't do diddley to "sell" TM; it was the 'tude and the vibe of the TM teachers and TM practitioners of the time that sold TM. They looked as if they were having fun with their lives. *That*, IMO, is why people signed up. Now think of the people who are going to be passing out the newly-rewritten sales brochures for the modern TM and TMSP programs. The vast majority of them are 60 years old or pushing 60, and (based on things said here about Fairfield) when you see them on the streets and talk to them, it's not as if they really radiate a great deal of the 'tude or vibe of having fun with their lives. They may still talk the talk of TM, but based on reports here, many of them secretly spend their spare time and available cash going to see every visiting healer, saint, spiritual teacher and traveling shakti salesman who comes through town. How walking the walk of the long-term benefits of TM and the TMSP is that? Think back to when you were first handed *your* first TM sales brochure. Did you immediately read it, and dive into the talking of the talk, or did you look at the person who handed it to you and do a mental check on whether that person seemed to walk the walk of what he or she was trying to sell you? IMO the TM movement is *WAY* past trying to "fix things" by doing yet another rewrite on its sales brochures. It seems to me that there are only four ways that they can "fill the domes" the way they claim they want to: 1. Pay people enough money to overcome their reluctance to doing something twice a day that is no fun. (And find other people *to* pay for it, because the TMO is certainly never going to pay for it itself.) 2. Come up with another "the world will blow up unless you don't" emergency and try to run that number again. (And then watch as everyone ignores it completely.) 3. Pay brown-skinned boys from India to bounce for the people they can't either pay enough or inspire enough to do it them- selves. (And again, find someone other than the TMO *to* pay for it.) 4. Find some way to appeal to youth again, to present a way to experience "happiness without the chemical crutch" to a new generation, but in such a way that this new generation Don't Have To Give Up Their Lives To Experience. Door Number Four would be cool, and the only approach I see working, but I don't think it's ever going to happen or even be considered. The TMO powers that be are too used to being in power; they are not going to even *consider* an approach that would take power away from them and curtail their ability to be control freaks. Having lived the first ten years of their *own* TM history in relative freedom, being asked only to meditate and then live their lives the way they felt like living them, with no heinous rules or restrictions on their behavior, they are now set on a path of never granting that same right to young people who discover TM today. Instead, they expect these young people to look at *them*, the tired old people passing out the carefully-rewritten sales brochures, and actually be *inspired* by what they see. They want their lives to be regarded as walking the walk of enlightenment and embodying the energy needed to change the world. But the kids they're handing these sales brochures to are looking past the sales brochures at the tired, control-freak old farts passing them out and think- ing, "They want me to turn out like THAT? And PAY them for the privilege? Not gonna happen."
