I like this story - individual stories are so interesting to read...this story
(and Mark's also I think) help to explain the idea that energy is accessible by
all - yet our human responses are influenced heavily by our filters. For those
who can wield energy and have practiced at this, it gives them a different,
powerful, albeit more all-encompassing perspective in most cases, that can be
used to teach. It is always the human that insists on elevating other humans
to pedestals and thinking of various individuals as beyond reproach. I like
thinking of the duality in us - without recognizing the duality...we seem
doomed to development of individual and collective destructive pathologies that
teach through experiential pain and suffering.
--- On Wed, 7/20/11, Ravi Yogi <raviy...@att.net> wrote:
From: Ravi Yogi <raviy...@att.net>
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: cognitive dissonance
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, July 20, 2011, 12:37 AM
I do appreciate the stories you have shared on Swami Rama and the ones from an
earlier post challenging seekers with opposing views.
However I don't know if anyone suggested CD as being an intellectual thang,
"discomfort" implies energy, emotion.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
> Because this subject interests me, I'll try a little
> harder to explain my approach to it. Unlike many here,
> including I think Xeno and some others, my approach to
> cognitive dissonance is not in the least intellectual.
> I don't perceive cognitive dissonance to be an intel-
> lectual phenomenon; it's an energy phenomenon.
>
> A lot of my approach admittedly comes from the time I
> spent with Rama - Frederick Lenz. Whatever else he
> may have been, he was a great connoisseur of energies,
> in the same way that others are connoisseurs of fine
> wines. He'd take us out to the desert, or to other
> places of power, and we'd meditate there and listen
> to him rap, and dig the energies. He'd occasionally
> try to explain the different energies, and help us
> try to take advantage of the energy of a particular
> place of power and draw upon it to make huge leaps
> in our spiritual progress. It seemed to work; in my
> experience I'd come back from those desert trips
> blown out of my socks and blown out of my body. For
> several days there would be not only no self, but
> *nothing* one could hold onto as what only 24 hours
> ago we'd laughingly called "reality." Instead there
> was a subjective feeling of being totally "in flux,"
> a self-identity as energy, moving, not as self, fixed.
>
> I really dug it. I still do, and still make Road Trips
> to places of power to immerse myself in the more
> dynamic energies there and draw upon them to help me
> make changes in my life. But not everyone did. Some
> Rama students would be on the same hikes I was and
> we'd get to one particular place and they'd double
> up as if they'd been punched in the stomach. Rama
> would explain that there was a particularly strong
> energy field there and although they were perceiving
> it as negative or some kind of "attack," it was just
> energy. Then he'd advise them to eat a candy bar,
> because in his opinion sugar helped to "cut" the
> effect of strong energies like this. It always
> worked. Go figure.
>
> So in my case I don't think of cognitive dissonance
> as being an intellectual thang at all; it's just a
> particular intense, swirling band of energy. And I'm
> pretty comfortable with that energy. I'm so bent that
> I *get off* on that energy; it gets me high.
>
> Others, maybe not so much. For them there may be an
> immediate reaction to the energy that makes them want
> to make it GO AWAY. And they accomplish this via
> denial, via rationalization, via diving for the most
> comforting "answer we've already prepared" dogma in
> their spiritual quiver that "explains" it, or via
> any number of other means. I rarely go there because
> to me the energy is comfortable. There is no dis-ease
> or discomfort caused by juggling seemingly contra-
> dictory concepts or ideas. They ARE contradictory,
> on one level of reality. On another, they aren't.
> For me the "answer" to the koan of contradictory
> ideas is found in transcending the plane of ideas
> and the intellect, and dealing with the CD situation
> on the level of energy.
>
> This approach has helped me over the years in trying
> to resolve the energy nexus that was Rama himself.
> The guy was *simultaneously* able to meditate better
> than anyone I've ever met, able to "broadcast" higher
> states of attention to others, able to manifest many
> of the siddhis, and *at the same time* he was arguably
> a real dick, lacking in integrity, self-indulgent,
> a control freak, paranoid, and a bit of a charlatan.
> What could be more of a CD situation than that?
>
> There is no "answer" to be found on any intellectual
> plane for all of that. These things really were to some
> extent contradictory. Yet they coexisted. I never try
> to deny the contradictions, or even to try to "explain"
> them intellectually; they just were, as part of the
> reality I experienced when around him. *At the time*,
> what prevented these contradictions from getting in
> the way of having fun and having clear, shiny meds
> was in a sense being able to transcend the one level
> of reality in which these things appeared to be contra-
> dictory and move to another level of reality in which
> they weren't. It was very much the study of alternate
> realities, close to what was described by Castaneda.
>
> Carlos Castaneda, although more than a little a char-
> latan himself, was valuable in that he invented a
> language with which to describe these phenomena and
> experiences. Just as Maharishi invented a made-up
> language to attempt to describe the indescribable,
> one that we still use on this forum because we share
> it, Carlos invented terms that described the study
> of occult energetics. If you have read him, I would
> suggest that the resistance to feelings of CD is
> something associated with the tonal, whereas getting
> past that to a sense of comfort with CD is more
> related to the nagual.
>
