On 10/30/2014 6:42 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]
wrote:
*From:* "dhamiltony...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]"
<FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
*To:* FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
*Sent:* Thursday, October 30, 2014 11:57 AM
*Subject:* Re: [FairfieldLife] Growing Up TM
Ethnography. Om no that first paragraph was really fine. It gave a
lot of information to get going and you see it is an article where you
the reader get to roll up your sleeves up to work with it. You're
being way too cranky and hard-minded.
No, I'm being realistic, because at one point in my life I was as
insane as the people in Fairfield who believe that by bouncing on
their butts they are "flying." But in my case this delusion only
lasted for about a year.
>
Lasted about a year? Maybe you could explain to us why your
autobiography is still up on your Rama Lenz site:
/"Anyway, if you're interested, I wrote some stuff about the fellow and
what it //
//was like to study with him in a book that's on the Web..."/ - TurquoiseB
Accessed on October 30, 2014
http://www.ramalila.net/RoadTripMind
>
I regained my sanity and left long before the TMO started claiming
that by bouncing on my butt I could "create world peace," which is
actually a more troubling level of insanity than believing it could
make them fly. I'm presenting on this forum (that was *created* to
discuss alternative views of TM, BTW) a different point of view on the
insanity TM "dome goers" are living with on a daily basis, because it
appears they're not likely to ever get that point of view from within
Fairfield itself. There is too much effort being expended by people
like you to "candy coat" this insanity and try to present it as if it
were normal. It isn't. It never was. It never will be. What it is is
insanity. If you can admit that, you might become sane someday. If you
can't, you probably never will.
As written it is actually an important article in ethnography about
the group of meditators having come to live in Fairfield, Iowa. For
those of us who live here in FF the writing captures things that we
all live with. Things that are very familiar. Writing like this is an
important adjunct to journalism by outside writers or in scholarly
papers written by people who have not lived it. This article is worth
a bookmark, like that article that Donna Schill Cleveland should have
one. These are important voices that should be cultivated for the
perspective they have.
turquoiseb wrote :
*From:* "Michael Jackson mjackson74@... [FairfieldLife]"
<FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
https://medium.com/the-archipelago/growing-up-in-utopia-8102f58dfcbc
image
<https://medium.com/the-archipelago/growing-up-in-utopia-8102f58dfcbc>
Growing Up in Utopia
<https://medium.com/the-archipelago/growing-up-in-utopia-8102f58dfcbc>
When your family and friends want to save the world by meditating, you
can sometimes feel out of place in small-town Iow…
View on medium.com
<https://medium.com/the-archipelago/growing-up-in-utopia-8102f58dfcbc>
Preview by Yahoo
I couldn't read this piece because I couldn't get past the first
paragraph. Whatever the author's intention in writing it is or was,
his cluelessness in that first paragraph stopped me in my tracks, and
kept me from reading any further:
"I learned how to fly when I was 17. I’m not talking about a plane,
and this isn’t some euphemism. 'Yogic flying,' which is basically
meditation at the black-belt level, offers the potential of human
levitation -- although in actuality it looks more like energetic, if
not rather effortless, cross-legged hopping."
This person (although his intention may have been to suggest the
opposite) is IMO *still* suffering from the ill effects of growing up
in an insane asylum. Bouncing around on one's butt and calling it
'yogic flying' is NOT 'meditation at the black belt level,' it's
INSANITY at the black belt level.
Try picking any town in America, walking along its streets, stopping
people at random, and explaining to them, "I'm doing a survey. Twice a
day I bounce around on my butt on big slabs of foam, along with other
people who do the same thing because we are convinced that doing this
will reduce crime, affect the weather, and create world peace. What do
you think of this?"
My bet is that you would get answers like, "Uh...sounds fine to
me...good luck with that..." spoken over the interviewee's shoulder as
they were edging away, watching you carefully and hoping that you
weren't following them so that they didn't have to break into a run.
See, this is the thing that makes interacting with long-term TMers on
this forum so challenging -- they really have NO IDEA how insane they
are, and how insane the things they believe are.
For many of them, it seems as if it's been so long since they've
actually talked with anyone who WASN'T indoctrinated with all of this
cult nonsense they way they were that they've forgotten how these
normal people think and act. They're used to interfacing with people
who don't bat an eyelash when you announce to them, "Sorry...got to
go...it's time for me to go fly now."
Hint: That's insane. No one is "flying." No one has EVER "flown" in
*any* of the TM "flying" halls. And no one ever will.
Most people, told that this would even be *possible*, would react with
either laughter or derision, and walk away. TMSPers reacted by paying
several thousand dollars to learn how.
Hint: That's insane.
And it's as insane now as it was when you first paid those thousands
of dollars. The only reason people on this forum and around you in
Fairfield don't think so is that you live in an enormous insane
asylum, in which the residents are reinforcing their shared delusions
by pretending that they're "saving the world" instead of acting out
less-than-sane fantasies.
Some of these inmates who post to this forum get upset when I or
Michael or Salyavin or Curtis point out HOW far away from mainstream
definitions of sanity they are to believe that there actually IS such
a thing as the 'Maharishi Effect.' I imagine that inmates in mental
hospitals feel the same way when doctors and nurses point out that
they're not *really* Napoleon or Jesus Christ.
To these people I say, "GET OVER IT." Wake the fuck up, take a look
around at international standards for sanity, shake yourself, and
realize that if you actually believe that bouncing on your butt can be
called 'flying' and that performing this bouncing is creating world
peace...uh...you're INSANE. You're NOT "special" or "more evolved" or
"10,000 X more powerful than lesser people," you're INSANE.
It's OK to *be* insane, if your insane beliefs give you some sense of
comfort and don't hurt anybody. After all, millions of people believe
in an invisible man in the sky who watches everything they do, and as
long as they don't get in other people's faces about it, they can be
that insane and still be considered productive members of society.
But ferchrissakes don't pretend that the things you believe AREN'T
insane, and don't pretend to be outraged because other people point
out the insanity. You CHOSE to be considered insane the moment you
signed that check and paid thousands of dollars to learn how to 'fly.'
Live with that choice now, and try not to pretend that you're still
sane after having made it. Having made that choice makes you an
outlier, an anomaly within human society. A nut case.
99% OR MORE OF THE PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET ARE GOING TO CONSIDER YOU A
NUT CASE IF YOU TELL THEM YOU BELIEVE THAT BOUNCING ON YOUR BUTT IS
'FLYING' AND THAT IT'S 'THE BLACK BELT OF MEDITATION'.
It's not. And no amount of claiming will ever make it so.