On Dec 17, 2011, at 3:01 PM, maskedzebra wrote: > One thing (you wouldn't know about this personally) about TM and Maharishi: > it makes you contemptuous and patronizing when it comes to discussing > Christianity.
Well, unfortunately for you, you've probably lost the best conduit to speak deeply re: Christianity & TM in the person of Rev. Curtis D. Blues - as he's the person on this list who spent the most time and attention (that I'm aware of) getting to know the Catholic priest-meditators-as-TMers - the biggies (most if not all whom saw through the veneer of the Faux Holey Tradition and parted ways with TM). I think those who drank deeply of a mystical Christianity broke easily with the sandy ground of TM, based on the rock of their Christ-consciousness. Those with a more superficial Christian sand-consciousness are doomed to the purgatory of up-bubbling mantra till they part their mortal frame… At one time Christian Centering Prayer actually resembled TM, although now, not at all. I attribute that change to the Catholic contemplative break with TM-as-perrenialist-panacea … and Thomas Keating. > But I think the real giveaway about the East is its implicit sense of > superiority over Catholicism, when in fact this very posture is itself > evidence of something ultimately not in agreement with reality. Depends on the POV - the "east" is not one homogeneous whole - it's many Points of View, sometimes not merely differing paths on the same mountain (the Perennialists view), but more frequently different mountains altogether. > > You never knew who Tim Tebow was a few weeks ago. I am glad you are now fully > au courant. On reflection, I had heard of him, I just had little interest. For me, commercial sports is the primary mechanism for embruing the acceptability of endless war on our children. > > But you are right: I will be ambivalent tomorrow; I like the Tebow miracle > storyline, but I also love those Bill Belichick-coached Patriots. Tom Brady > and Sidney Crosby and Roger Federer and Jonny Wilkenson are my favourite > athletes. > > But I do like Tim Tebow very much: if only for his impressive humility. Indeed, a wonderful human quality so lacking in Christofascism; but I do not know enough of Mr. Tebow to comment on his humility. I believe it was you who once said the sole redeeming quality of mundane Christianity was to keep a person clean till their next life (after which time they'd presumably take up a higher path).