Well, you're right.  I'm really not the praying type. 

 I can see that I'm going to have to be more careful in picking the terms I use.
 

 I do enjoy it when you sprinkle in some of that dry humor in your responses.
 

 More comments below:
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote :

 Not likely, but why pray? How is that going to change the situation as you 
perceive it? I do have a certain tolerance for Jim; unlike Barry, I do read 
some of his posts, though their usual brevity and emotional coarseness is a 
turn off. (Barry's emotional coarseness is also sometimes a turn off, but I do 
not perceive him to have a genuine attachment to it, so mostly it is just fun.) 
Compassion for Jim is not necessary, he is enlightened by his own account, 
therefore not in need of it. I would have better understanding if he was a 
little more clarifying about his experience. Sympathy is generally worthless as 
it just imitates someone's suffering or discomfort, or coddles their 
conditioning, which is what we desire to minimise. 

 CYNIC: a person who believes that people are motivated purely by self-interest 
rather than acting for honourable or unselfish reasons.
 

I am probably more of a fatalist than a cynic. I am more of a sceptic than a 
cynic.
 

 I think people are motivated by those forces we call laws of nature, and that 
there is not a real entity in there performing the action. Rather there is an 
elegant machine with inputs and outputs, and getting the mind of the machine, 
the processes of the machine to realise it is a machine is of paramount 
importance for its happiness, satisfaction, and contentment; and from this 
arises tolerance, compassion, understanding, and with some machines, even 
sympathy. 
 

 Ouch, I hadn't meat robot in some time, and here you are bringing it up.
 

 Oh well.
 

 If one is laid back enough, tolerance is a given. Compassion is recognising a 
situation for what it is so one can focus on the best possible resolution of 
difficulties so that the experience of what is, at the very least, most real, 
opens into experience; this does not necessarily imply any sympathy if it 
prolongs inconsonate, conditioned behaviour. Understanding requires some input, 
and there are certain situations where understanding simply cannot be 
assimilated so one must act in a more cursory fashion, and with probably less 
satisfactory results.
 

 There are many things I do not understand; the world is wide and vast beyond 
the grasp of the human intellect except in bits and pieces one at a time. If I 
have no heart, this is the way nature made my mind; you will need the tolerance 
to accept that for it is not in the power of a fictional entity to change the 
machine.
 

 People assume TM will change all these things, but in practice this does not 
seem to be the case most of the time, people remain more or less the same. 
Enlightenment is not about change. It is about what is always the same. 
Enlightenment does not change these things. Behaviour modification might, but 
this often does not come about by an act of will but by outside imposition, 
such as provided by being surrounded by the mores of an organisation or 
community; and often here, it is just token acceptance, not an actual change. 
 

 The reason you have all these so-called moral rules in religion, is faith, 
belief, and even technical practice — ritual, spiritual techniques — does not 
much alter human nature. Prison tends not to alter human behaviour, and social 
conventions form a psychological prison that has much the same effectiveness — 
that is, practically none, for if the stops are removed, all hell breaks loose.
 

 So if a person is to be 'good', then probably that body has to be born that 
way and will flow naturally along those lines of behaviour; and those that are 
not, well, we see them everyday. Rotten thoughts come from the source of 
thought, whatever that may be, just as easily as 'good' thoughts. The TMO 
simply removes those from the roster who fail to conform to the allegedly 
predicted results of meditation, and hopes nobody notices the change. The 
higher up in the organisation though, persistence rather than removal seems to 
be the rule.
 

 Would another, deeper awakening result in a looser, more compassionate 
emotional tenancy for 'me'? It might or it might not; I have no idea; I do not 
know what remains of and for my life, I just know it goes forward and it has 
been satisfactory for some time. It is now time for me to sit very quietly for 
awhile. I do this from habit and it seems to correlate with what I would call 
improvements in my grasp of life, but from this point on, as it has been for 
the last decade or so, how that might or might not unfold is a complete mystery 
to me.
 

 I think I am gaining a better appreciation of what enlightenment, or the 
growth thereof can do in terms of modifying behavior, and yes, I'm not sure if 
it is much.
 

 But having a few mystical experiences can have the effect of changing how you 
view the world.  Suddenly things seem different.  Yes, I know that is so vague 
to be meaningless, but that's how I'd describe it at present.
 

 And then the old saw about whatever the cup is filled with, is what it 
overflows with.  I'll stick with kindness as something to aspire towards.
 

 

 

 Allow me the space to have this happen. Prayer is not necessary, for nature 
takes its course in any case. All beings revolve as if mounted on a machine.
 

 
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote :

 I will pray for you taxius, that maybe you will be able to get out of your 
head a little, and into your heart a little, and then you will understand the 
tenants of tolerance, compassion, understanding, and sympathy. 

 These are worthwhile emotions dude.
 

 I am not sure how you culture them, but for sure you don't culture them by a 
certain hard cynicism we often see here.
 

 It's not complicated.
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote :
 
 

 Don't you think this last sentence is a bit presumptuous? I mean, you are 
enlightened and all that, and can tell the rest of us how enlightened or 
unenlightened we are, but how do you determine how rich a person's experience 
is, other than your own?
 









   

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote :

 I will pray for you taxius, that maybe you will be able to get out of your 
head a little, and into your heart a little, and then you will understand the 
tenants of tolerance, compassion, understanding, and sympathy. 

 These are worthwhile emotions dude.
 

 I am not sure how you culture them, but for sure you don't culture them by a 
certain hard cynicism we often see here.
 

 It's not complicated.
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote :
 
 

 Don't you think this last sentence is a bit presumptuous? I mean, you are 
enlightened and all that, and can tell the rest of us how enlightened or 
unenlightened we are, but how do you determine how rich a person's experience 
is, other than your own?
 









 


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