Here's even more from Barry about me - Kaopectate, anyone?? :-)
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...Too sad for words. Now we know what an "enlightened" person
-- someone who claims to have achieved "the peak" in life -- does with his
time. He looks up a number of old posts from someone he doesn't like, carefully
snips passages from them and concatenates them together to give the impression
that they were all written at once in a big "wall of words," and posts them in
an attempt to further demonize the person he doesn't like. What were the terms
a couple of this dweeb's followers posted recently on FFL, claiming that they
deplored such tactics? "Misrepresentation?" "Straw man arguments?" This
appears to be the counterpart of what Mr. Enlightened was doing shortly before
he ran away from FFL with his tail between his legs. Back then he spent hours
scouring the Internet for photographs of the same person he didn't like,
cropped and modified them in Photoshop to make them look more embarrassing than
they really were, and then posted them to FFL. Here he's doing the same thing,
only with words. For the record -- and for the benefit of his followers on
The_Leak, who we all know will be reading this on FFL -- this is a person who
claims to be enlightened, demonstrating how he believes an enlightened person
should act. Even if you ignore the total lack of ethics involved in this little
exercise in lashing out, you have to wonder how someone supposedly
"enlightened" and representing "the peak" of human achievement has that much
hatred in his heart and time on his hands... :-) 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."
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com>
Absolutely hilarious. Why don't you behave like a bunch of immature schoolgirls
on your own site?
Just to interject a note of fairness, I don't think that any of the people
regularly posting this kind of stuff to FFL are "schoolgirls." Nor are they
actually female, unless Jimbo has instituted the same kinds of cross-dressing
rules over on The_Leak that he followed here while posting as
enlightened_dawn11. :-)
In fact, truth be told, a female is one of *only* two posters who -- having
exited noisily from FFL, declaring that the only hip place to be on the Net was
The_Leak and how low-vibe and horrible FFL is -- actually STAYED over on
The_Leak. Those two people are Anne and Nabby. Good for both of them for in
this instance *not* having been hypocrites.
Because you wouldn't be allowed. Funny really that you have to come over here
to indulge your pettiness. It seems the irony is lost on you still...
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote :
Whoa look there Steve seventhray--our readers demand and thrive on consistent
content; and I dare you to show someone who can match Barry Wright's ability in
producing such monotonous, identical content with this methodical frequency and
consistency. We are not looking for anything reasoned or objective, neither are
our readers.
I know I will take flak from FFL lurker reporter community and Barrry for
breaking our sacred code of silence--but they surely can't disagree with my
assessment. We are united in our admiration for Barry and your sarcastic barbs
will do nothing to change that!
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote :
Yay LR! I don't think you ever have to worry about Barry running out of this
kind of "content".
This is "home" for the Barster, his little oyster, where he gets to be a big
shot, with his minions.
Just remember the TPR (-:
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote :
We lurker reporters love ya Barry !!!!!! Without you we would be nothing, you
hear me
lurker_reporter.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
Here's my theory, which is mine.
I have long noticed the vehemence and exaggerated outrage with which long-term
TMers (and especially current or former TM teachers) react to having the C
word aimed in their direction. This is curious, because many of them use the C
word all the time to describe *other* organizations that they see as
"competing" with TM, as in "Sure, Scientology is a cult because of its weird
beliefs about alien overlords bringing humans to Earth in space ships and then
dropping them in volcanos, but when we talk about the Vedic gods and how *they*
created the Earth, we're being rational." But the moment that term is applied
to TMers -- or horror!, to themselves -- they flip out and go crazy.
I think that this *consistent* overreaction to the C word is because most of
these former TM teachers' minds are still controlled by the D word.
The D word started being a big thing in their lives shortly after they
returned from their TM Teacher Training Course. On that course, they had
learned the things they were supposed to say in intro lectures, primary among
which was, "TM is not in any way religious." But also on that course, they had
learned the puja, along with its English translation, so they clearly knew not
only *that* they were bowing down to Hindu gods every time they performed it,
they actually knew these gods' *names*.
So now the course is over, and they're giving their first intro lecture and
someone asks, "Is TM a religion?" And they look at the person asking the
question and they say "No. Absolutely not." And then they repeat the rest of
the stock phrases they were taught to parrot whenever this question comes up.
Bingo -- the D word. DENIAL. It's *not* IMO as if these people are actually
*lying*. They've just learned to compartmentalize things such that when they
say "TM is not religious" they manage to DENY what they know from the
translation of the puja, that it is *definitely* religious in nature. And the
more often they stand up in public and experience this level of DENIAL of what
they really know, and "tell stories" that some part of them *knows* isn't true,
the more cognitive dissonance they feel, and the more guilty that part of them
feels about lying.
That GUILT is what I think gets triggered when they hear the C word applied to
them. Part of them bristles, because being considered a cultist just doesn't
"fit" with how they see themselves. But another part of them -- the part that
lied so easily and so smoothly so many times during intro lectures -- realizes
that this lying and this level of denial IS part and parcel of being a cultist,
so they feel guilty. And that's why they lash out...they *hate* feeling guilty.
They want to feel special, and superior, and above all *better* than these
people who consider them to be cultists. But that feeling, too marks them as
cultists.
So that's my theory. It's *just* a theory. I am not presenting it as if it's
Truth. So if it pushes your buttons and makes you angry, you might just want to
spend a few minutes trying to figure out why. Either that, or you could just
stick with being angry and lashing out, and remain stuck in denial.
