--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "yifuxero" <yifux...@...> wrote: > > right, makes me wonder....(since if one is merely interested in > wine-tasting, looking at the Babes, conversing with friends, > etc; not that I'm dissing such enterprises "in themselves"); > and is posting on a forum oriented toward Spiritual stuff, > why not access the wine-tasting forum?
Please explain why wine tasting and looking at babes are NOT spiritual. I'll wait. :-) My point was that Fairfield Life is *not* a forum oriented toward "Spiritual Stuff." It just likes to think of itself that way. A consistent theme here, especially among the TBs of one spiritual trip or another, is how much better or more evolved they are than the rabble. I am merely making the point that -- based on their everyday behavior and the things they focus on -- the people saying this *are* the very rabble they think they're better than. They focus on the exact same things -- glomming onto and obsessing on celebrities (there is no difference between "spiritual celebrities" and "Hollywood celeb- rities" in my opinion), glomming onto and presenting as if they were Truth nutcase theories and conspiracies, acting as if they just can't *wait* to play "pile on" to someone who does something they consider "wrong." And their interactions with each other are almost entirely limited to ego-battles and an attempt to claim, "My beliefs about X are better than your beliefs about X, and *much* better than your belief in Y. So there...nyaaah nyaaah." The fascinating thing is that there is a characteristic behavior on "spiritual forums" that one sees *more* there than one sees it in the tabloids. In the tabloids, people whose mere IDEAS have been challenged don't on the whole lash out at the challenger *as if they had been attacked personally*, as if the challenger must be "made to pay" for the "attack," and as if it is assumed that everyone who also believes in the IDEA that has been challenged should "pile on" and assist in dissing the challenger. Here it happens so often that people have stopped noticing it. When someone such as myself points out this systematic behavior, the dissing gets focused on them. Just look at some of the reactions yesterday to me doing nothing more than suggesting that FFL was more like a tabloid than a "spiritual forum." I contend that this is due to attachment to ideas and concepts (in this case, the idea that "We are special, not like the rabble") and *an inability to tell the difference* between a challenge to the idea and a challenge to one's self. If I were to try to imagine a real "spiritual forum," it would be one in which people could react to a chal- lenge to their most cherished belief in an IDEA by discussing the IDEA calmly and dispassionately, not 1) mindlessly dissing the challenger, and 2) feeling that the dissing was not only "deserved," but itself somehow "spiritual." I have not yet found such a forum on the Internet. This leads me to believe that whatever the *claims* of the various spiritual groups or traditions repre- sented on the various forums about how the IDEAS that they identify with have "changed" them and lifted them above the rabble, the *claims* don't seem to work out on the level of behavior. Their behavior is still rabble behavior. Anyone who wishes to disprove my contention can do so easily, by discussing IDEAS as what they are -- IDEAS. Not "Truth" that needs to be "defended," just IDEAS. *That* would be "spiritual" IMO.
