---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <punditster@...> wrote:
Ann:
> I guess my point here is that it takes enablers to allow certain individuals
> to spiral out of control. When you put someone on some sort of pedestal
> it can really screw them up, whether they are "holy men" or "holy women"
> or the Justin Biebers and Miley Cyrus' of the world. Feed the ego like you
> would force feed a goose to fatten up the liver and sooner or later you
> create
> something that is unwell.
>
This is a new twist - now it's Barry's fault for enabling Rama. Go figure.
Yup, just like it's my fault for enabling you by responding to your silly
statement above. But thank you for the opportunity to illustrate my point.
On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 10:51 AM, <awoelflebater@... mailto:awoelflebater@...>
wrote:
Michael wrote:
I feel the Universe has nearly infinite if not infinite experiences we can all
have, and the so-called higher states of awareness or enlightened perception,
including all the celestial perception stuff is just another experience among a
plethora of experiences.
I agree. I also have a hard time finding greater or lesser validity of any
particular experience over another. An experience experienced is just that - it
is reality for that experiencer. And as we all know experience is ultimately
subjective and particular to each person. How to understand or interpret, let
alone judge or put some value on someone else's reality/experience is, for me,
an exercise in futility. I do, however, believe in personal growth and the
reality of the possibility for the expansion of awareness and the development
of sensibility in different human beings in different phases of their life or
lives.
I think that if one chooses one can create an experience, a persona that is
real moral, always sativcc, always unperturbed, sort of like the historical
Buddha was supposed to have been. But most of those who have "higher states of
consciousness" cycle from those kinds of experiences into egoic focus that
includes often enough the idea that since everything is a play of awareness, it
doesn't make a tinker's damn what they do with and to people, cuz its just all
consciousness playing around. No rules, no standard of conduct, these are the
ones like Muktananda, Maharishi and Rama who go off the deep end of ego and
screw things up.
I also think that many people who are under the assumption that a sort of
higher state of consciousness can or does exist in "gurus" or "teachers" and
are therefore responsible for giving these people free licence to do as they
please and to support them in this, often to the detriment of everyone
involved. I have yet to see anyone free of ego and I don't think of ego as
something terrible. Like many characteristics, it can become distorted,
unbalanced but in and of itself ego is neither good or bad. Just as ambition or
empathy or passion is not inherently, ultimately good or bad. How it manifests
can make the difference between something becoming positive, negative or simply
remaining benign. It's complex, of course.
I guess my point here is that it takes enablers to allow certain individuals
to spiral out of control. When you put someone on some sort of pedestal it can
really screw them up, whether they are "holy men" or "holy women" or the Justin
Biebers and Miley Cyrus' of the world. Feed the ego like you would force feed a
goose to fatten up the liver and sooner or later you create something that is
unwell.
