---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
Exactly what Salyavin said. As far as I can tell, the charge of "obsession" falls completely on the shoulders of those who are so attached to their beliefs and so petty as to get uptight when they encounter ideas contrary to their own. Bitching about others having such ideas is weird, and IMO the sign of a weak mind. Becoming *so* uptight about it that they feel the need to try to *silence* the contrary ideas -- and then, when that doesn't work, run away and form a forum where no one is *allowed* to express contrary ideas -- is the sign of religious fanaticism. That's the thing about memes. They can be either productive or destructive, all they need is a willing mind to enact them and they become part of a society. The TMO - like all religious groups - is what you might call a static society, the purpose of the people who have adopted it's way of looking at things is to keep things the same. This is because they believe in the core teaching and it's the teaching that tells us it is complete and cannot be improved upon, but it goes deeper. I remember being told that I shouldn't wear black, the reason given was that black is the opposite of light and we are supposed to be radiating light to the world. Crazy shit right? But I adopted the meme unconsciously and stopped wearing all my black T-shirts. You know you've been got to by a repressive organisation when someone else turns up wearing black and you feel shock at seeing it. Sounds weird and innocuous but there are plenty of examples of control that you will pick up if you get involved in such a static society. What length to have your hair (men only) what age you can grow a beard, what time to go to bed. All these things are part of a social system that exists to stay the same. And we haven't even got to the cosmological beliefs! Being static is only a problem because people aren't static and naturally have ideas. This was the job of the governors of the age of enlightenment - keep everyone on message and use every opportunity to have the memes adopted by others or reinforce them in anyone who wavers. If someone challenges the orthodoxy too much then they have to go. I did and it was made clear that I should probably go somewhere else. This an improvement over one of the world's other great static society's - Islam - where they'd chop off my head for doubting the prophet but it's still worrying that a group who's purpose is evolution doesn't like people doing things differently, or worse still even talking about it. This is Buck's quandary, he wants the beliefs he has adopted to stay true in a world where nothing does. And he wants a forum that was designed to talk about his organisation to not talk about it - except in ways that support the foundational memes. But he admits himself that since the perpetrator of the religion has died things have started to shift. For instance, the recognition that people have psychiatric issues that TM and it's teachings can't help. Sure they are still doing "vedic" crap to try and deal with it but it should be a sign to him that things change because people have ideas. Marshy would have stamped on them and denied there could ever be a problem with TM. Things evolve, Buck will maybe one day realise this process of challenging and coming up with new ideas to explain things is how you, me and every other curious sceptic got to the position we are in now. But to do that you have to challenge the static memes of religious fundamentalism that stop you evolving. Without realising it he's already made the first step. As Curtis and I (and Sal) have said many, many times -- and as the religious fanatics refuse to believe -- we come here for FUN. It's an "alma mater" kinda place, as Sal suggested. Here we can talk about things we *used to* take seriously but don't any more, and we can explore those ideas in more depth now that we're not part of a cult that's trying to keep us *from* exploring them more deeply. If there is an "obsession" here, I suggest it's on the part of those who literally HATE the people who express ideas contrary to the TM/MMY dogma, but who keep reading every word they write, just so they can get off on the righteous indignation they've become addicted to. I have no more respect for them than I do for the idiots who feel that killing cartoonists is their divinely-given right. From: "Michael Jackson mjackson74@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> I feel the same as Sal, except that I don't do TM anymore. Sal, you summed it up very well. BTW which Star Trek you watching? Original? Nex Gen - my favorite was always Deep Space 9, and I make no apologies for it! From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : <snip to> Regarding this "obsession" with the TMO, what I have is an interest in what my old spiritual almer mater is up to because it was a wild time and I met some crazy people (in both good and bad ways) and got to see the inside of a cult and saw how it works and how it affects affects people. I still like TM as it goes and have fond memories of my time living there, but you've got to transcend the crap you are in to evolve. It's the movement types who aren't curious and carry on like everything is great that worry me. Finally, FFL is something to do at work and during the adverts on TV - watching Star Trek at the moment - it's not an obsession either. It's a bit of fun. So lighten up. BTW what are you doing here?
