No, no other questions. The whole guru thing is so universal on one level and
so ridiculous on another level there must be gazillions of experiences we can
all have. I appreciate you sharing what you have shared.
--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 1/20/14, awoelfleba...@yahoo.com <awoelfleba...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Signposts Of Enlightenment
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, January 20, 2014, 4:52 AM
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...>
wrote:
Do you really
feel that Robin was influenced by outside intelligences?
Since you had so much time with him, I value your
opinion.
Hey Michael, I like your
enquiring mind. I like that you worked so hard to realize
something that, unfortunately, in the end did not pan out
for you. I like you as a person, as much as anyone can know
or like someone here at FFL without having actually met
them. I think you are smart and sincere and you are
passionate. You are also a very good writer so don't
sell yourself short by comparing yourself to other writers
here that you say you admire. (smiley face) Therefore, I am
happy to try and answer your question.
Robin was definitely tuned
into something beyond who he was as Robin. At the time, he
thought he was enlightened and we believed this was so. Not
having seen what enlightenment was I could buy it. He was a
very western version of this phenomenon. He incorporated
western dress, western speech, western culture (art,
literature, poetry, music) into what we talked about, what
we went to see in theaters and concerts. He surrounded
himself with all that was current and relevant and dynamic
in what we know of as 'lifestyle' in what was then
the 20th century. Consequently, he seemed relevant to us on
lots of levels and the added bonus was he was a realized
human being. How cool was that?
I am not going into all the
detail that I could here because I lack the energy and the
time but to answer your question I have come to know Robin
on a few levels. I knew him in the 80's and I know him
to some degree now. He is different in some very fundamental
ways now than he was in the 80's. There are still
similarities though but the similarities don't have
anything to do with "enlightenment" - they have to
do with his essential personhood as I know it to be. The
trappings of what he personified or manifested back when
there were so many confrontations and demonic battles and
drama seems to have fallen away. I saw the regular man, the
normal guy in moments back during WTS and that is what
attracted me to him, not his enlightenment, not his promise
to help us rid ourselves of the demonic. I simply liked the
man, his brilliance, his intellect and the times when he
acted like a friend. Others liked him and hung around for
other reasons.
I know I haven't
answered your questions MJ so if you want to know more let
me know. There is so much to cover that, without specifics,
I find myself unable to hone in on any one thing.
--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 1/20/14, awoelflebater@...
<awoelflebater@...>
wrote:
Subject: [FairfieldLife] RE: Signposts Of Enlightenment
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, January 20, 2014, 1:46 AM
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com,
<anartaxius@...>
wrote:
Yeah,
but Barry did not mention Robin at all in his post, so why
bring up a tangential topic? It is very difficult for
spiritual teachers to avoid some of these traps because
when
surrounded by adoring wanna be disciples it is difficult
to
avoid being forced into a very strange bubble that
isolates
them from a more normal existence. Very few teachers even
acknowledge there is this effect. Now I think that even
teachers that fall off the wagon sometimes produce
awakened
students; more so one who does not. But what was the result
of
Robin's teaching, where are his enlightened
students?
I think this is a moot
question given what we know about what Robin feels about
his
time "enlightened" and his acknowledged effect
on
those who chose to either become his wife, best friends or
students. Robin renounced it all, made huge efforts to
divest himself of what he recognized as evil and unwanted
influences in his life. He ended his allegiance with those
intelligences that took over his life, his actions. Other
teachers have not chosen to do that so comparing Robin to
other enlightened mystics or gurus is not really relevant
here. Consequently to ask who his enlightened students are
is like asking where Marilyn Monroe's grandchildren
live. One thing I will say, however. I am a product of my
time around Robin in certain ways. I have seen and
experienced many things during my time around him and then
banished from the group that have enriched me, made me
wiser, made me stronger and made me much more loving.
These
are qualities which I feel I earned through fierce
introspection, pain and even suffering. Consequently I
treasure the appearance of these things in my life; I feel
blessed or graced or lucky to have been branded,
painfully,
with deep enough despair to have reached the place where
this understanding and vulnerability could take root
within
me. In this way I became "enlightened". I
changed.
I matured. Nothing would ever be the same again. The
details
of why this should be so will not be stated for you here
because they are too personal and there are too many on
this
forum who I wouldn't trust with knowing them. Suffice
to
say, if "enlightenment" is half as precious as
becoming a better person through having been broken in
half
then it must be something.
---In
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com,
<authfriend@...>
wrote:
Yet more of Barry's insane
obsession with NPD:
Granted that from what I've
heard--including from Robin--this list does characterize
many of his behaviors with his group 30-some years
ago.
However, we didn't see
any of these behaviors while he was
participating on FFL, which is, of course, consistent with
his insistence that he was no longer
enlightened.
Barry didn't know Robin
30-some years ago; all he knows of Robin is what he's
read by and about him on FFL.
Yet he claims Robin exhibited a
"classic" case of NPD while he was
here.
I wonder how Barry would explain
this peculiar discrepancy. Does he even recognize
it?
Celebrating 47 years of being on a
kinda, sorta spiritual path this month (and a few years of
being on less formal paths before that), I find myself
thinking back and wondering whether I actually learned
anything.
One of the things that makes me
wonder that is the difference with which many people who
call themselves experienced spiritual seekers view certain
traits in the teachers they align themselves with perceive
those traits, and the way I perceive them. With this in
mind, here is a list of qualities that I've heard
expressed to me over the decades by people who are
convinced
(and often trying their best to convince me) that the
teacher they study with is enlightened.
Just for fun, notice that
Barry loses track of his presentation of the point
he's
trying to make after the first two items here. Those items
are what one might well expect to hear from a person who
believes their teacher is enlightened, as he stipulates
above. But the rest are phrased increasingly negatively;
they aren't qualities that someone would proudly
attribute to their
teacher.
This is just one more sign that as
obsessed with NPD as Barry is, he's unable to talk
about
it coherently.
* They radiate power or charisma.
When you're around them, the intensity of their aura
or
"vibe" is such that people often fall under the
sway of it. People speak of "getting high" from
being around the person, and of changes in their internal
state of attention that they attribute to
"darshan," and equate with actual changes in
their
personal state of consciousness.
* They speak with
"authority." When these teachers speak or write,
there is a *certainty* to what they say that many people
associate with the presence of Truth. The people
themselves
often speak in terms of "truth," suggesting that
the way they see things and the way they interpret the
things they see *are* "truth" or
"reality."
* They seek followers. It's as
if their goal in life *is* to find followers, and to
convince them of the "truth" of what they have
realized. And there is a clear demarcation between the
teacher *and* the followers. You see it in the
hierarchical
structure of their organizations, and even in the seating
arrangements of the rooms they speak in. The teacher is
always in front of or in the center of a circle of other
people, the obvious focus of attention, and he or she is
often seated on a chair or dias raised above the level of
the followers.
* They feel entitled. Once these
individuals have found followers, they *expect* things
from
them. Like attention. They *like* to be focused on, and to
be complimented and told how great they are.
* They present elitism as a good
thing. The teachers themselves often refer to those who
are
"lesser evolved" than other people. They remind
the followers that they -- because they are wise enough to
have recognized how elite the teacher is -- are "more
evolved" than this rabble, and thus have no
responsibility to treat them the way they treat others
"in the org," meaning in the circle that has
grown
up around the teacher.
* They have grandiose goals and
think of themselves in grandiose terms. Very few of the
people I've ever been told by others was enlightened
wanted *only* to help a few people and live a happy life.
They wanted World Peace. They wanted to enlighten every
sentient being on the planet, to make sure they were
living
as exalted and elite a life as they are.
* They unashamedly use people. The
requests for the followers' time, money, energy, and
attention start soon after they become followers, and
never
cease. The grandiose goals, after all, are far more
important than the issue of whether the followers called
upon to contribute to them are able to pay their rent.
* They view other people as
competition, and tend to turn interactions with them into
battles, which they always "win." In lectures,
if
a student either disagrees with one of the teacher's
pronouncements or even just agrees with it half-heartedly,
the teacher turns it into an "issue of faith,"
and
*confronts* the student until they submit, and admit how
wrong they were. Thus "the truth," as seen by
the
teacher, always prevails.
* They don't deal well with
doubt or criticism. Many of these teachers are *famous*
for
how they react to their students having doubts about the
way
they describe themselves, the things they teach, or their
relative importance in the world. Outbursts of anger and
fits of "lashing out" can be common, and the
followers often just write these outbursts off as quirks
or
eccentricities, and feel that the teacher is
"entitled
to them" because, after all, they're so special.
* They have firm "It's my
way or the highway" rules. It's very much *not* a
democracy. Those who allow their doubts to escalate into
actual open criticism of the teacher openly are dealt with
swiftly and harshly, almost always by excommunication and
demonization.
* They seem detached from the
emotions and problems of their followers. You simply
cannot
imagine how often I have heard this presented as a
"commercial" for some supposedly-enlightened
spiritual teacher. "I told him about the problems I
was
having dealing with my father dying, and he just laughed.
It
was *wonderful* to see how unattached he was to the petty
problems that plague lesser humans."
* They believe that "only the
most special" can fully understand and appreciate
them.
And they often encapsulate this belief into the structure
of
their organizations, ensuring that only those who focus on
them and accept everything they say without question and
pretty much non-stop ever rise to positions of power in
their orgs.
* They tend to react to other
teachers -- including their *own* former teachers -- with
disdain, and with something that would look like envy and
jealousy, were they not so evolved and all.
* When challenged on these things,
they assert that they are *entitled to them*, because of
who
and what they are. They are "special," after
all,
and others around them are not.
NONE of these characteristics can
readily be found in the descriptions of the enlightened we
find in the planet's "core curriculum" of
spiritual teachings.
Where they CAN be found -- ALL of
the characteristics listed above -- are in the
psychological
definitions of a condition called Narcissistic Personality
Disorder.
Go figure.
