Duve, I don't know you but I am sorry you were hurt here on FFL this way in this thread. One would hope folks could bring their spiritual experience and insight here and not take abuse for it. I was wondering as I read that original offending post as it was written to you how you felt about it? It would seem at the least a felt apology to you is reasonably well within order. From its carefully written wind-up pitch and then follow-thru it appeared more as the corrosive meme in form that we have seen employed in method to degrade or humiliate people here on FFL. By contrast I would hope folks could feel safe enough here to stick around and share more freely on FFL of their thoughtful insights by experience, like that story of Joey the saint in school that you shared with us here. I do hope that you are not another casualty of wounded hurt by what evidently is an endemic culture of unkindness that has come in here. -JaiGuruYou
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : Yeah, Michael, Jim was one of the abused, for sure -- not that he didn't counter with what I'd call "ferocity." There's been many who have reported experiences and then blah-blahed about it suchly that others took umbrage. Don't make me look bad here, bro, heh, cuz I don't want to do the scholarship to look up the past in which might be examples. Pretty sure I'm not mis-rembering. Of course, if anyone came here promoting another guru, the volleys would be the psychic equivalent a fusillade of depleted uranium. Some "gurus" would be soooooooo instantly triggering to almost everyone here, but true-believers can be found by anyone it seems. Even renown gurus, say, Chopra, couldn't have a defender here -- it'd be a hanging! Aaaaand, too, look at Nabby's crop circles thingie. Because most of us simply don't resonate with the concept (aliens leaving important symbols in crops -- they're not made by troll-guys with boards) he was made into the class-dunce here. I'm guilty of pretty much writing off Nabby in my posts -- not sure how brutal I got, but even a little derision from my side is unwarranted not to speak of being defensible. But, there it is -- you too, bro, -- we love to do this shit, SCREAM AT THE BAD GUYS, and it just sucks us down the slippery slope -- which is our projections masquerading as "snow." It's just too damned easy to make fun of anyone. Too. How too? I used to teach what was then called Special Education. Elementary school. Two things about those with a seriously dented intellect: 1. They love to find fault in others AND CAN. 2. They will argue their position with great stubbornness despite all other evidence. I had to "debate" a nine year old, big-dent-in-his-skull, brain damaged in accident, 40 IQ kid about how to spell the word "when." He almost won! See? We don't have a solution for this. Everyone is equally as likely to be holding onto non-truths -- and most of us are far more able than that nine-year old to sling words at the situation instead of actually facing our own self-deluding assertions: I know all there is to know about the present issue. I'm smarter than the other person. The other person's vibe is jerking me all to shit and I'm not going to cut this bastard a break....NOT TODAY. . Etc. Aaaaaaaaaaaand, by the way, that kid taught me one of life's deepest lessons. I posted about this here before: Here 'tis: Joey the Saint Joey had a fixation -- he was an assembler of trophies. His father was in business selling trophies and plaques, ya see, and Joey would make bowling, golf, baseball, etc. trophies out of the pieces his father could not use in the business and gave to Joey to play with. These were scuffed or dented, but to Joey they were GOLD. He made some of the goofiest looking amalgams -- football players in full stride with a football tucked in one arm and a tennis racket in the other, for instance. And it was always catch as catch can, but Joey didn't care. He just loved assembling them, thought they were very marketable, thought of himself as a businessman like his father. Oh, he was full of esteem about it, let me tell ya. It was, you see, just about the only thing Joey could do well "in his own eyes." With a 40 IQ, Joey was looking at a future like a life sentence without a chance for parole, but Joey was happy -- happy as Trotakacharya with what he could do well. And Joey taught my class, in one stroke, something more important than ANYTHING I ever taught anyone in that class. One day, Joey came to school with three big boxes. His father helped him bring them in. And his father and I stood there and watched Joey teach us all. Joey opened the boxes, and out came a special, unique statue for every kid in the class. 18 statues made by Joey who couldn't spell the word "statue." 18 statues that were to Joey, by his own inner logic, as precious as fingerprints that could only be assigned to one and only one person. 18 statues in boxes that Joey knew so well that he could dive into the boxes after saying each pupil's name and instantly pull out Pedro's statue, then Anna's statue, then Cathy's statue . . . 18 statues with names assigned to them. Joey knew which was to go to whom. Silently, for Joey could hardly talk, he gave each statue out like it was a soul. And every kid there opened themselves to Joey's vision of the moment and took their statues into their hugging arms like each trophy was a new born babe. Joey gave everyone a symbolic a kiss on the forehead to take home. Everyone deserved a symbol of "job well done," thought Joey. And 18 kids with almost no chance to succeed in life, hummed with delight. And no one I've ever seen in my whole life was as happy as Joey that day. He so innocently beamed his love. That's my goal in life. Be as happy and as wrong . . . and as right as Joey. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote : And let's face it, if I came on like gangbusters here and touted my spiritual experiences, the mob would tear my descriptions asunder.....as has been done to every single person who has come here to report suchlike. I am only aware of Brother Jim aka Dr. Dumbass - who else claimed spiritual awareness/awakening/enlightenment and received a stout thrashing as a result? From: Duveyoung <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2015 4:21 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Fancy that! I'm thinking over here that having had an "experience" does not validate "as necessarily true" the thoughts that arise afterwards. We see most folks here thinking otherwise -- that is: they think that their thoughts MUST be resonant with the ultimate reality of their recent experience. To have seen someone levitate doesn't make one's subsequent thoughts about levitation necessarily true. Even the person who levitates can be expected to have but a mere abstraction for an explanation that is open to every sort of nay-saying. Relativity being such a dynamic, if one knows this, hypocrisy of a deeper degree is needed to validate one's thoughts and yet invalidate the subsequent thoughts of others -- others that had differing experiences. Nabby is a very very sincere poster, for instance, yet we found him being bonked by those who claim to not personally have such blinkeredness when it is obvious to all that everyone is blinkered in some IMPORTANT and PROFOUND manner. Stone, glass house and all that. No one gets to toss the first stone. Or the second. I would expect that someone who found fault in others for being a true believer and "running with it," would be especially careful to underline ones obvious conflict of interests. As for me being inside my head and not having had experiences. Harrumph. While this assertion is not couched in the normal cruel-troll manner of FFL-past, it does seem to accuse me of being spiritually bereft of the basic information needed to be clear about spirituality. Only I could know if that's true -- to assert it as true is to do a one-upman-ship deal. I claim that this kind of insinuation is AGAINST THE GUIDELINES. And let's face it, if I came on like gangbusters here and touted my spiritual experiences, the mob would tear my descriptions asunder.....as has been done to every single person who has come here to report suchlike. This is the place where prophets come to not be honored....heh heh. And, by the way, I have had and continue to have some very profound moments when all my abstractions align -- with a wonderful congruence -- with my heart and thought stream. Moment by moment, if I wish to do so, I can suss out from my flow of consciousness perfect examples of the concepts I hold dear. Doesn't make me correct, but I sure do have experiences. I'll walk this back: everyone has great experiences -- even if they've never personally noted such. Given the human karma of the ego daily dying-into-sleep, being reborn in dreams, and then coming back to life in the morning, what isn't magical? To diss others for not describing it "well" or "logically" or "intuitively acceptably," is at least juvenile and probably an act of aggression.....and AGAINST THE GUIDELINES. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : Edg, because you're so...uh...edgy and all, I suspect you'll take my quickie response below as if it was intended as some kind of affront, and it really wasn't. I was just taking advantage of these "revalidated FFL guidelines" vibes to just be honest. To expand on this a bit, to be honest I've always gotten the impression from your writing that your approach to most spiritual topics is intellectual, as opposed to experiential. When you get into how much you know about Advaita, for example, my impression is that this is stuff that you "know" -- intellectually -- about Advaita, but without ever having experienced the states of consciousness that are being written about. Correct me if I'm wrong about this. I say this not to take a dig at you but to point out a possible distinction between the two of us. I haven't just read about and thought about the basic principle of Tantra -- the peaceful co-existence of complete opposites -- I've *lived* it. I've spent fourteen years with Rama -- and all the time since -- living it. Please try to remember who you're talking to here. I write science articles for a living. I have a strong feel for what science considers "real" in this world and what it does not. At the same time, *I cannot deny my own experience*. While knowing all of this about science, I have personally witnessed many of the siddhis you have only read about. I have sat in the desert -- or in a Dennys along a California highway -- and watched someone just gently lift up off the ground (or the naugahyde Dennys benches) and float in the air for a while. The morning after experiencing something like that, if you are a bit of a cynical scientist like myself, you tend to wake up thinking, "OK, what the fuck was that?" I still don't know. All I know is that I experienced it, in states of mind that were as high and clear as I have ever experienced in this incarnation, and that were completely free from the effects of any kinds of drugs, and that for me it all really fuckin' happened. I am NOT saying that I know exactly *what* happened. What I'm saying is that *something* fairly extraordinary happened, and that until someone proves to me exactly what it was, I'm going to go easy on myself for not getting all anal about what is "real" and what isn't. That "real" enough for you, dude? :-) From: "TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2015 8:53 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Fancy that! I have *absolutely no problem* with such seeming contradictions. If you do, I would suggest that they just might be *your* problems. :-) From: Duveyoung <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2015 8:49 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Fancy that! Barry -- you are on record here being quite against most "magical thinking," but here we find you being quite the believer. "That explained quite a few of my dreams during the period I lived there. :-)" Would this be hypocrisy or you just playing loose with "what's real?" I ask this in the fullest sincerity to honor the recently re-validated FFL guidelines. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : Excellent. A few years ago, before we actually moved from Spain to the Netherlands, my odd extended family and I spent a month living in Amsterdam in a house we'd rented there. It was a really cool house, with multiple floors and a grand piano and a great kitchen, but at the same time there was always something "off" about it. So I asked around the neighborhood and found that it had in previous centuries been an asylum for crazy women. That explained quite a few of my dreams during the period I lived there. :-) From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2015 8:02 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Fancy that! In the late '90's the TMO acquired a mansion in a highly sought after part of London. Namely Kensington palace gardens. It was a fabulous house, right opposite Kensington palace. Huge place with double iron gates and a massive ballroom. It faced east too. The heads of the movement all lived there and all said how amazing the perfect vastu felt. I lived there too for a while, just helping out the media department. Great place to stay as the big knobs sure knew how to live, bespoke silk carpets and the best food eaten off mahogany tables. The idea was that they'd use it to wine and dine the rich and famous thus spreading TM to the top of society, as was Marshy's wish at the time. "The rich won't eat in a poor house" he said, they sure didn't here! Not that all that many came. Hardly any in fact, but the intention was a good one if you approve of that sort of elitism. I didn't but staying there made a nice change from our draughty, cold and empty mansion in the Bedfordshire countryside. But as I was finishing my book on The Great Escape I was reminded that the house had a rather more chequered history than expected. It was owned and used by MI6 to interrogate captured Nazi officers during and after WW2. Including the masterminds of the massacre that wiped out 50 allied airmen in 1944. Fancy that, I might have slept in a room that was once occupied by a terrified Gestapo murderer who sat awake all night dreading his fate at the hands of a war crimes tribunal. I wonder if they appreciated the vastu at all?
