Share, try not to be such a dimwit. For dentists, there is an actual certification process, and licensing boards that one can contact to see whether they are licensed and have a good reputation. There is no such thing in the world of self-proclaimed spiritual teachers or those *claiming* to be enlightened.
And yet, people like you *believe* them when they make those claims, and go to them -- usually paying fairly large sums of money for the privilege -- and rely on them to keep your "spiritual teeth" straight. Doesn't that strike you as kinda DUMB? ________________________________ From: "Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 5:26 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Graphing the Illumined Batgap interviewees by types Curtis, first I'd ask you to operationally define *being considered a dentist.* Does it mean clients go to that so called dentist and let him or her work on their teeth? If it does, then I'd say that those probably toothless clients need to find another system of determining who is qualified to work successfully on their teeth! By successfully, I mean the dentist helps the client keep teeth in their head. On Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:58 AM, "curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> wrote: To Share: But what if the criteria to be considered a "dentist" was just to put a sign in front of your house that said "dentist?" To Barry: I resonate with what you wrote and that is the direction of my thinking on altered states of consciousness of all kinds. We have to drop the traditionally informed pretense that we "know" what these experiences mean. On the other hand there is also an need to acknowledge that they do exist and might be interesting, especially if we could get more date from outside tight belief system interpretations. I am hoping that Sam's book in the fall will be along these lines and open up this discussion to a broader audience. Buck doesn't know anything about what Sam's experiences are. This elitist assumption is one of the barriers to discussing experiences in a broader, and I believe, more useful context. I don't deny that long term TMers will have their contribution to this if they can get out of the "us verses them" conditioned response. Maharishi did his group a real disservice in the long run my cultivating that elitist arrogance. It was a short term plus for him in group control but he may have doomed this small group to obscurity in the future. I also believe that our language is really getting in the way in describing subjective experience. There was always the claim that Sanskrit was better suited for these discussions because it was built on people making them. I don't know if I believe that but I do like the ideal of creating better, more precise terms to discuss internal experiences. It will not be easy. Too often in the movement a sort of word salad is thrown out and people knowingly nod their heads that this explains what they were experiencing. We can do better than that kind of poetic self-congratulatory social reinforcement. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote : turq, good point and I agree that we're all the same on some level. But if I have a toothache for example, I'd rather consult with a good dentist rather than a good podiatrist. My bad? On Sunday, May 18, 2014 6:53 AM, "TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> wrote: On Sunday, May 18, 2014 6:33 AM, "dhamiltony2k5@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> wrote: In range and distribution of illumined Batgap interviewees by types, just throwing these Batgap illumined people interviewed thus far on a scatter graph by their experience and spiritual affect on others, it seems observable that some of the awakened are more proactive in affect as teachers, some are long time practiced at helping others spiritually and/or transformational for others just by being of a field effect of presence. Some of them are teachers in nature of character, while some may glow in the closet and watch sort of like Harri by experience was for so long. Others transformational in effect like a Janet Sussman also from childhood or Connie Huebner from younger or Ammachi from way back, yet different from glowing in the closet each in their lives have been engaged teaching in formats with spiritual experience, techniques and scholarship to be of help to others for much of their lives, Batgap is a fabulous oral archive around this range of spiritual possibility within humanity based on a scale of abiding experience and spiritual transformational affect. It is useful for parsing to see them in a range and distribution of, Teachers -Gurus -Sat Gurus -Jagad Gurus by scale of transformational affect. Just as a question, wouldn't it be more interesting to consider the possibility that everyone Rick has ever interviewed is Just Another Human Being, whose experiences are in no way any "better" or "higher" than any others? In other words, it seems to me that Buck is still arguing for the elitism approach, trying to categorize these folks into "higher/lower" and "better/worse" pigeonholes so that people like him can look up to some of them and look down on others. Wouldn't it be more...uh, dare I say it...enlightened to consider them all at exactly the same level -- just human beings having an opinion based on their individual interpretations of their respective subjective experiences?
