Maybe if we break it down, Jim, we can understand what he's talking about.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <reverse_archery@...> wrote : Will someone please tell Barry that he is welcome to submit his application to me, for membership over at The Peak, at any time. But I do have a small requirement for him first, not reflected in his writing below: mental stability. Thanks. What's always boggled my mind is how many of the people who have *BEEN* "kept in line" by TM teachers and "Governors of the Age of Enlightenment" (I mean...just *think* about that term, and that people are *so* brainwashed that they take it for granted and never question it) react. Rather than resenting having been told what they can and cannot do and what they can and cannot think for years by these dweebs, *they aspire to be just like them*. Thus you find people like Jim Flanegin, who never had what it took to become a TM teacher, wanting to become just like them and impose his will on others and force them to live the way *he* wants them to. In a very real sense, this strikes me as the same kind of "inherited behavior" we see in victims of child abuse. Instead of growing up to hate such abuse, they tend to grow up to become abusers themselves. I find the very existence of "The_Leak" quite fascinating. It started because one person on FFL (Jim Flanegin) had a grudge against another person on FFL (moi) because he wouldn't buy into his (ludicrous) claims of being enlightened. "Mr. Enlightened" got angrier and angrier and angrier until one day I used a throwaway phrase to make a point, and Jimbo went fuckin' crazy over it and started slinging libel accusing me of being a pedophile, and encouraging people to sic the authorities on me in the real world. He *also* did the same thing that Doug/Buck is *still* doing, and started appealing to Rick Archer to have me "thrown off" of FFL, and created whole threads with this in the Subject line, thus smearing my name in search engines. Rick of course ignored him like the idiotic control freak he was acting like. Me, because what he was doing was ILLEGAL and the very definition of libel, I sicced the Dutch cops on his ass. "Mr. Enlightened" reacted by not only NOT apologizing for the libel, but by running away and forming his own group, where he has now developed a history of banning anyone who dares to say something he doesn't like. It's not just the COWARDICE of all of this that gets me, but the "abused trying to become the abuser" phenomenon that makes me roll my eyes. After all these years of being indoctrinated by the TM movement, it's understandable that someone with as weak an intellect as Jimbo's can no longer even *conceive* of thinking any way other than he's been told to think. What is less understandable is that he wants to be able to do to other people what was done to him. I guess he finally managed it, by creating a forum on which *HE* has the final word on what anyone can say and what they can't. I hope he's finally happy. That would be a first, in the entire time I've "known" him on the Internet. I honestly hope that Jimbo and his followers have a grand time over on The_Leak. He gets to finally be the control freak he's always wanted to be, and his "followers" get to feel superior to those they've left behind. But the bottom line is that they simply couldn't handle dealing with a forum on which people were allowed to express their own ideas as they wanted. They're only comfortable on a forum in which the ways they're *allowed* to interact with others is dictated to them. If anyone is looking to define "the legacy of the TM movement," I would suggest that this is it. I did my weekly scan of The_Leak this morning as my Dutch cop friends have advised me to do, just to make sure that the weasel who created the group isn't still spouting libel about me. He doesn't seem to be, so it would seem that even the dumbest people can finally learn if you just hit them over the head with reality enough times. :-) However, scanning a few of the posts quickly just to get a feel for what they talk about over there, it occurs to me that a few of them are still holding onto grudges and fostering the notion that they were "pushed out" of FFL and "forced" to create another group because Rick didn't "protect" them and their interests on FFL. This strikes me as so delusional I felt I should discuss it a bit. First, Fairfield Life was NEVER created "for them," meaning as a place of refuge (the actual word that Buck used in one of his latest gripes) for TM True Believers. It's ASTOUNDING that anyone could *possibly* believe that. FFL has -- since Day One -- been the *opposite* of a refuge for TBs. Its charter is right there on the home page for all to see. It is *by design* a place where one has the right to challenge anything and discuss it. FFL was, in fact, created as an *alternative* to the TM movement itself, where you could get yourself excommunicated just for expressing criticism or doubt about the official TM dogma, Maharishi, or even TM itself. How did these bozos who are now holding court over on The_Leak *MISS THAT*? I mean, that defies belief. HOW did they come to believe that FFL was somehow created for *THEM*, and come to believe that if Rick allowed someone (anyone) to criticize or disbelieve the things they said, that he was somehow "failing" in his "duties" to "protect" them. It strikes me that the answer to this "HOW" question can be expressed in one word: E N T I T L E M E N T. Long-term TMers feel *entitled* to believe the things they believe, and to claim the things they claim. They've been taught for decades, for example, that the *only* thing one has to do to be enlightened is CLAIM to be enlightened. They have furthermore been taught that when someone does claim to be enlightened, it's somehow rude or low-vibe or an actual *assault* of some kind to...uh...not believe them. That's insane. OF COURSE I don't believe that many of the people who claimed to be enlightened on FFL actually were. Duh. All you have to do is look at the way they lead their lives and watch the ways that they overreact to someone doubting their claims to tell that they're not enlightened. But they feel ENTITLED to make these claims, and furthermore they feel ENTITLED to make them without anyone being *allowed* to call them on how ridiculous the claims actually are. Well, now they've got their own playground, where they can claim anything they want, and the audience will just go "Wow," and no one will ever ask them to back up anything they claim. It's like they've managed to create the ultimate sandbox for overly-entitled children. And I say "Fine," and wish them well with it, if they're so shallow that that kind of environment actually appeals to them. But I *DO* wonder WHY -- now that they've got this fairy-tale world where they can spin their fairy tales all day long and no one will ever call them on them and point out that they *are* fairy tales -- WHY they spend so much time still bitching about how they were persecuted back on FFL? And how Rick failed to "protect" them there. It's like they're still looking to get someone to *apologize* for not buying their bullshit. It's all very weird, if you ask me. They've finally got all the ENTITLEMENT they ever wanted, and they want even more. Go figure... ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote : certifiable at this point? if anyone even reads it. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : For some time now (over a year, and escalating after one particular person took a powder from the forum and essentially told everyone here to fuck off and die), the primary characteristic of the forum called Fairfield Life has IMO been whining. A few TM TBs, deprived of their version of Saint Joan to fight their battles for them against the invading hoard of infidels, tried to do the same thing themselves, and with disastrous results. Not being able to *stand* the fact that people who disagreed with them about the importance of TM, Maharishi, and above all their over-corpulent egos could express these thing freely here, they set about a non-stop snipe hunt in which they tried to demonize them and make them go away. That exercise in pettiness went so far that one of the constant heretic-attackers finally went over the line and resorted to actual slander -- he encouraged people to call or write officials in the home town of one poster he particularly hated, and tell them that he was a child molestor. Rightfully busted on this, he ran off with his tail between his legs and tried to form a new group, one in which supposedly right-thinking, *really* spiritual people like himself could talk about "spirituality" without being interrupted by horrible heretics like myself. It took less than a month for him to throw the first person off of his new forum, for the sin of revealing what he was up to back over on FFL, the forum he'd sworn he would never visit again as long as I was here. Go figure. What a fuckin' soap opera, right? So anyway, a few of these folks left, and started their own forum, one on which they can supposedly say anything they want about their so-called "peak" experiences, without anyone pissing in their cyberpunchbowl. One would think they'd be happy, and...uh...stay over there, where they claim things are so much better. But noooooooo. A hard-core few of them spend more time writing to Fairfield Life than they do The_Leak, saying essentially the same thing over and over and over: "We don't like it over here, because a few people don't treat us with the respect we deserve when we talk about 'spiritual' topics. These people are BAD, and should be made to go away, so we can 'share' our spiritual experiences without fear of interruption or embarrassing demands for proof of our claims." Blah-blah-blah. You know the whine...you've heard it now for quite some time. My contention in this post is that the whining comes directly from how they were taught to act and live by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. HE was the one who taught these TM followers that the only safe way they could live in this world was to clump together in groups. If you were doing Maharishi's "program" correctly, you had to live in TM-only communities, reside in TM-approved houses, bounce on your butts together several times a day, and participate in the sessions in which you "share experiences" and get them voted "#1 experiences" or "#2 experiences" or whatever. In those "sharing" sessions, there were always two sides to the "sharing." A few people would have actual experiences to share, and if they were deemed #1 experiences, everybody would look at them in an envious way and inwardly go "Woo!," and they'd actually get some attention. In the TMO, with its we-only-have-one-leader-and-he's-the-only-one-there-will-ever-be-allowed-to-become-the-focus-of-attention mentality, getting a little attention by talking about your "spiritual experiences" in one of these sharing sessions was pretty much the only attention you were ever going to get. The other side of the "sharing experience" was personified by the much larger vast majority of people who never had anything to share. THEY were there because many of them had never really ever HAD a major spiritual experience, and they needed to hear other people talk about *theirs* so as not to lose hope. It was the same rationale as all the "TM research" -- even if you had never had any experiences in decades of meditating that felt like the enlightenment you were promised, you could still have hope if you heard other people talking about *their* experiences or saw some chart that suggested they were actually *having* experiences. Now think about Fairfield Life. Same thing. Same dynamic. Sure, when Rick started the forum, it was intended as a safe forum for people who had gripes with the TMO to express them, and some of that has determined the character and the nature of the forum ever since. But for a smaller number of FFL participants, this was a place where they could come and act out the two sides of the dome "sharing" experience in cyberspace. Those who were hungry for attention could talk about their supposedly "spiritual" experiences, and a few people would go "Woo" and they'd get some attention. There is no need to name these people, because everyone here knows exactly who they are. Then there were the others, the much larger vast majority of TM TB FFL participants, who came here hoping desperately to read about any experience that could be construed as "spiritual." BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T HAVING THESE EXPERIENCES. They needed to get their "spiritual experience" fix passively -- second-hand -- by listening to *other people* talk about experiences they'd had, so they could get inspired by them, and keep on keepin' on with their TM. And, of course, the only *valid* experiences of this sort were the ones arrived at through the practice of TM and the TMSP. So this brings us to the present day, with most of the "I want attention" TM TBs now having moved to The_Leak, and three others *ostensibly* having moved there, but in reality spending more of their time here BITCHING than they do there. And *what* are they bitching about? The everlasting whine is always the same: "We don't feel *comfortable* sharing our spiritual experiences here, because you don't treat us right. This is BAD of you. You should go away, or Rick should *make* you go away." I call bullshit. I don't think ANY of them have ANY "spiritual experiences" to share. At least not any that they've had in the last ten years. I think that spiritually they're impotent, and that they resent that they can't come to FFL and feed off the supposed spiritual experiences of other TMers, to convince themselves that they're still part of the most specialist, most elitist, most importantest, and most wonderfulest group of human beings ever to grace planet Earth. They're PISSED OFF that the people on this forum who seem to be consistently having the most spiritual experiences, and are willing to talk about them, are *NOT* the TM TBs, but the heretics. This does not "compute" in their minds, and it makes them crazy. So they come here and try to do *exactly* what they claim has been done to them -- drive them away. It ain't gonna work. Those of us who have experiences to talk about will continue to talk about them here. If that pisses you off because many of these experiences don't come from TM, tough titties. We ain't going away. My message to these three whiners is simple: "Bring your OWN experiences to the table and be willing to discuss them, or fuckin' go away yourselves."
