Gonna horn in on this discussion, if you don't mind.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@...>
wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater <no_reply@> wrote:
<snip>
> > It was like you were on some revenge mission to absolve Vaj
> > of any prior wrongdoing (a prime example of running to the
> > side of a friend deemed wrongly accused precisely in the way
> > you argued was not necessary at FFL).
>
> Not necessary doesn't mean we never do it. Of course we do.
> What I object to is the idea that it is an obligation that
> can be imposed on someone from others.
As I see it, the idea is that everyone *should* feel that
obligation without anyone having to prompt them. It wasn't
so much that others were trying to impose that obligation
on you as that they were expressing their dismay that you
didn't think you *had* such an obligation--which they're
fully entitled to do. And of course this was not just with
regard to specific instances but across the board.
> You and I have been friendly. Does that mean that now you
> need to follow up on every Judy post to me that says
> unflattering things?
I may disagree with Ann a bit here. I don't think it's
just one's friends, or people with whom one has been
friendly, who deserve to be defended from unfair
treatment. I think that's pretty much a universal
obligation.
<snip>
> I was sharing my opinion on what went down. I wanted to see
> if he would man up in the way he had been challenging me.
"Man up" by apologizing for something Robin didn't think
he needed to apologize for?
You're trying to set up a moral equivalence here between
his posts to you that made a detailed case for your being
less than honest in the way you were relating to him, and
your opinion that he had been less than honest with regard
to whether he had ever struck his students.
But those two situations are far from equivalent. You
ought to be able to see why, but if you can't, let me know
and I'll explain.
> > The funny thing about that was Robin's "confession" absolved
> > Vaj of nothing. Vaj never claimed Robin had hit anyone at
> > Sunnyside. But your gesture toward Vaj could be construed as
> > noble my some parties, I suppose. At least I now know you DO
> > defend your friends, unfortunately this was at the expense of
> > basically cutting the legs out from under another friend.
>
> As I said, I don't get into the parsing of when it happened.
> Robin made it seem like it could never have happened. That was
> the impression I had from his denials. So the where and when
> isn't important to me.
Maybe if you'd paid more attention to the when and where,
you'd have seen that this isn't what he said.
And you didn't even consider, much less attempt to refute,
his stated reasons for that very narrow denial.
> Vaj said he got the info from someone else who saw the video
No, Vaj said he saw it himself.
> so there is plenty of room for detail mistakes. Except for
> one point. The important one.
The one you said *wasn't* important, remember? "There is plenty
of compassion here for weird shit we all did in our past and
this doesn't sound like such a big deal."
> You are applying labels of friendship to someone else's
> experience. Friendliness online, for me, is a verb. It is
> not a status.
Right. FriendSHIP is a status.
<snip>
> When Robin first switched gears on me I did try to answer his
> challenges in detail. But in the end I realized that he wasn't
> absorbing what I was saying, he was serving the same things as
> if I had not said anything. So there was no longer a
> productive back and forth. His final posts were attempting to
> read my mind to tell me what I was doing mentally AS I was
> reading his posts. It was not only inaccurate, it was highly
> insulting and assumptive. He was no longer accepting my
> feedback about my internal states. That is a pretty normal
> line to draw in reasonable communications don't you think?
Hmmm, let's see:
"Your main interest in Robin was the Barry Vaj angle,
that is my opinion. You can deny it all you want, that is
how it appeared to me."
And:
"It is pathological Judy. It is where you are broken
inside. There is no getting around that part of you. It
has swallowed you."
Aside from the fact that you express your reading of my mind
in a lot fewer words, what exactly is the difference between
those two quotes (only the most recent of many such) and how
you characterize what Robin was doing in his posts to you?
> Robin and I had many great posts together. He was also fond of
> using labels like friendship and love and then trying to use
> that leverage to impose expectations. For me, he acted in a
> friendly way for a long time, and then started getting
> unfriendly and accusatory. It really upset me but it was his
> choice. He shifted the context from acting in a friendly manor
(BTW, it's "manner." "Manor" is a great big house.)
> to something else that I don't need to participate in. He also
> defined his view of friendship as being completely honest even
> if it hurt the person's feelings. He was very clear about that
> on and offline with me. I told him that this was not how I
> viewed friendship and that my real friends don't have to hurt
> my feelings to give me feedback.
Me, I'd say hurting a friend's feelings is something one
tries to avoid unless there's a really good reason for it.
One doesn't do it without giving it very serious thought,
and proceeds only when something important is at stake.
But when something important is at stake, one doesn't
*refrain* for fear of hurting feelings. If the friendship
is a solid one in the first place, it should survive the
hurt feelings.
My impression of Robin's five-parter was that he'd given
it a tremendous amount of thought and felt that your
ability to continue to communicate with each other at the
level you had established was at stake. That was important
to him, but clearly not so much to you.
In fact, that's what comes through in this whole discussion:
your friendship with him just wasn't all that important to
you. But that surely wasn't apparent in your online
conversations before things went sour. Your feelings for
and commitment to each other appeared to be very much mutual.
<snip>
> I thought he owed an apology. I think his mystical view of
> what his state was coming off the mountain in Arosa is a POV
> that doesn't serve him. The malice you are imposing is not
> where I was coming from at all. It was not my intention to
> hurt him,
But you knew it would and went ahead anyway.
> I wanted him to man up.
That's such an offensive, shallow phrase in this context,
given what you've already said. You wanted him to accept
your view of the ethics of the situation, but as noted,
you never addressed his view, much less the specifics
that dictated that view ("where and when," etc.). You
*imposed* your view on him as if he were an empty vessel
just waiting to be filled with what you considered his
ethical duty. You simply erased his competing view of
his ethical duty as if it had never existed.
It's one thing to disagree about ethical views, to offer
arguments against a competing view and for one's own.
But to do that one has to take account of the existence
of the other view and inform oneself about the specifics
and the reasoning behind it. You didn't do that.
> It was my opinion about the situation that had gone on here
> for a long time that I considered unfair.
>
> The context of calling Vaj a liar is a focused agenda of a
> few posters here. I believe it is an unfair smear campaign
> waged by some because he believes that all the time people
> spend on Maharishi's techniques are a waste of time.
There've been plenty of people on FFL who believe this,
Curtis, who have never been suspected of being liars.
Sorry, but this is an extremely leaky meme.
You ought to go back sometime and take a look at Vaj's posts
and discussions with Robin about the visitation to Robin in
DC in 1985 in which Vaj allegedly took part. The
inconsistencies, discrepancies, and contradictions are too
many to count. (Such as the number of people involved.)
It's the same with Vaj's accounts of the supposed tape--or
tapes, plural, in some posts--showing Robin striking people.
I quoted some of them to you awhile back in response to your
post to Robin about his open letter. No two were exactly
alike, and some varied significantly as to the details.
Sure, details can vary *somewhat* in a single person's accounts
of an event over time. But the degree of variations in Vaj's
accounts is striking. That's the sort of thing that doesn't
exactly contribute to a person's credibility.
And then there are the flat-out falsehoods that are documentable
because they're claims about what FFL members have said. Not to
mention rumors of various sorts that Vaj reports as if they
were established fact. And all kinds of cryptic hints about
this and that which he refuses to clarify when asked.
Remember this to Robin? "You're totally still hiding behind a
false email address! Is that legal on Yahoo!.com?" Informed
by Alex that no_re...@yahoo.com is assigned automatically by
Yahoo to anyone who doesn't list their real email address, Vaj
replied, "Yes, I was aware of that, but it is not his actual
email address nonetheless. Therefore it is impossible to
contact him and therefore it is impossible to answer offlist
questions."
Does that strike you as something a straightforward person
would say?
Robin's take on Vaj was on target. If Vaj is in fact who and
what he says he is, he goes to extraordinary lengths to make
himself appear to be a fraud and a dissembler, even about
trivia such as the above.
> So Robin was joining a POV here that has ramifications beyond
> just Robin. It goes to the creditability of an ex TM teacher,
> Vaj, (which Robin also accused him as lying about) whose point
> is that TM is a baby technique that doesn't do what it claims
> spiritually. I don't share that view, but I respect it as
> valuable and important here as an alternative take on
> Maharishi's teaching.
If that were all there was to it, Vaj's credibility would not
be an issue, regardless of disagreement.
> So my support of Vaj is not just that we are friendly here. It
> is because I value his POV as something to consider as a well
> thought out option on the TM experience. And I would like to
> see more discussions about the details of why he is wrong
Have you ever tried to have such a discussion with Vaj on FFL?
I've seen any number of *attempts*--not hostile ones--that
have come to naught because Vaj seems unable to conduct a
coherent conversation. He dodges and weaves and doesn't address
significant points, introduces non sequiturs, brings up all
sorts of esoteric stuff that nobody here understands and that
he refuses to clarify. He takes the position that MMY was wrong
because what he said didn't conform to the traditional view (or
what he claims is the traditional view), which is a lot like
saying Martin Luther was wrong because he didn't hew to the
Vatican line.
Try it sometime. Pick something you disagree with Vaj about
and try to engage him in a discussion.
<snip>
> > It wasn't anyone from his past showing up, it wasn't fear of
> > some horrendous revelation from the past. It was simply that
> > a friend of Robin's, you Curtis, cut him to the quick. I
> > wonder if you would write that again if you had another chance.
>
> Of course I would. I thought he owed and apology or an
> explanation why he believed one was not owed
That was clear from his open letter. That was the part
you erased from existence.
> and I think his mystical interpretation of his state of
> "Unity" holds him back from recovery. It keeps him from
> seeing Maharishi in what I consider as a more sensible
> light as a human guy just like us and not an enlightened
> superhero. He still views him in a way I don't accept.
> And his whole Vedic gods thing is a serious breech
(breach)
> of what I consider a realistic outlook on life. I get it
> that it was his "experience" but one of the problems with
> spiritual practices and recovery from them is that the belief
> system upholds and shapes the experience. Our beliefs about
> them matter. Having worked with quite of few ex TM people
> recovering from their experiences I am confident about this as
> important.
Had you expressed all this to Robin previously? I don't
recall it in your FFL conversations, so if you had told him
before, it must have been offline. If that's the case, why
did you feel it necessary to express it again, in public,
at what you knew was a very sensitive time for him? Not to
mention your less-than-subtle suggestions that he was still
suffering from "mental impairment" ("if you are under the
care of any doctor"..."deranged mental states"..."there may
be a biochemical reason...").
And if it *was* the first time, what on *earth* possessed
you to dump all this on him when he was especially
vulnerable?
Wasn't your scathing opinion about the ethical issue enough?
