You left off part of the guideline Doug. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote :
Yes, FFL is categorized as a 'spiritual' group. One would hope that people could trust that they could post reflecting here on this yahoo-group about their spiritual experience without incurring personal abuse. Please note the yahoo-guidelines saying, “Don't threaten, harass, impersonate, or hurt others, and don't invade other people's privacy.” and “Exploitative or degrading comments are not welcome in Groups. Also not welcome are belligerence, insults, slurs, profanity or ranting.” If you wouldn't say it in public or with a group of friends, don't post it. When a person does have a 'spiritual' experience it is a good thing to find out if it is real or not, or if they are just mood making or making a mistake. The only evidence we have if someone has had a spiritual experience is if they say something. So what you do is you ask questions about that experience to see how well it holds up under scrutiny, to see if the person has any understanding of what they have just said. If there is a genuine experience, they should be able to come up with additional comments about it without much difficulty. If they stonewall you, that leads to the suspicion maybe they were putting you on, or that they made the statement from the viewpoint of the ego and are trying to get some mileage out it. That is, they maybe did have an experience, but now the ego stands in the way, looking for strokes. A spiritual experience is a road sign. You pass a lot of them on the way to whatever; once they pass, looking back takes you back in the opposite direction you want to go, even though spiritual progress is not really about going anywhere. Remember all the quotations Rick put on the Home Page of FFL: What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite. The healthy mind challenges its own assumptions. Whatever you think, it's more than that Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. Take what you need and leave the rest. I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for the truth; and truth rewarded me. Another question: Is a moderator allowed to threaten a person on FFL with expulsion, since one of the guidelines is 'don't threaten'? I still have not figured out who the stupidest person on FFL is. I think Barry knows. Maybe it's me. Historical insults and put-downs Mark Twain: "The trouble ain't there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right." Oscar Wilde: "Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go." Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: "If your brains were dynamite, there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off." Kierkegaard: "My opponent is a glob of snot." Winston Churchill: "Americans will always try to do the right thing — after they've tried everything else." Christopher Hitchens: "If you gave Jerry Falwell an enema, you could bury him in a matchbox." Aristotle: "It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of lying skilfully." John Adams: "In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress." Groucho Marx: "He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you — he really is an idiot." EE Cummings: "A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man".
