---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote :
I'm reminded of those immortal lines of Philip Larkin: They fuck you up, your mum and dad, They don't mean to, but they do. They fill you with all the faults they had and add some extra, just for you. (from memory, so may not be absolutely correct.) That's how I remember it actually. Worth seeing the whole thing again though. Jolly little number: This Be The Verse BY PHILIP LARKIN http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/philip-larkin They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : I suspect that the "imprinting" you are talking about happens well before adolescence, likely in the child before the age of seven. It won't manifest until much later, but it's there all right, a nice little present from "the family." ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote : Re stress and trauma: Doubtless the usual cause of psychological problems is because of inappropriate conditioned behaviour. But I wonder if in the case of sexual issues that imprinting isn't more significant. What's that then? Imprinting is a learning pattern which occurs at a particular life stage. What is important to grasp is that imprinting is instantaneous and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior. If this idea holds water then sexual imprinting is the process by which an adolescent boy or girl (at the point that sexual interests flood the system) learns the characteristics of a desirable mate from an accidental linkage between lust and some feature of the environment at that critical point. So if a boy's first stirrings were linked to a boot-wearing meter maid(!) then that could establish a fetish for that cue. What's noteworthy is that imprinted (unlike normal conditioned responses) can't be eradicated by the usual therapies. Hence sexual preferences are notoriously difficult to modify later in life no matter how distressing someone may find them. (Tim Leary and his acolytes claimed that LSD sessions could undo imprinted behaviour patterns. Maybe he's not the most convincing authority to cite. But maybe his suggestion is worth following up.) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : Truly excellent post, Salyavin, I agree with what you say. TM of itself does not resolve childhood traumas, in my experience, and the TM model of "stress release" is inadequate to address such issues. I think many long-term TMers are aware of this and have sought out other means of addressing those things. Lots of people here in Fairfield are involved in a process called "shadow work," which gets down into those deep-seated issues and helps to resolve them through a kind of enacted psychodrama. I did some shadow work and got a lot out of it regarding issues that had been with me since an abusive childhood but which decades of TM had not budged in the slightest. On the other hand, I think there are quite a number of people on the MUM campus here who still hope that enlightenment will somehow come to them one day and all their troubles will be over, and still others who know this will not occur but who do not have the tools or the knowledge to address serious long-term psychological damage incurred, as often as not, in childhood. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : Thanks, this posting is really sensitive to some issues and respectfully said. Though, there are a lot of folks around here who do in fact have [objective] experience of 'ritam' aka, the 'siddhis-like' in practice or formula otherwise by Patanjali with cultivated transcendence as MMY brought out. One could feel sorry for you and others that this was not your experience. “I have given you the key to the universe and you want an advanced technique?” -MMY May 1977 Compelled by enough spiritual experience on their own the meditating community of Fairfield, Iowa is proly not going to go away any time soon. I am going to copy out some of this posting as summary to add to material of particular experiences with the culture of the movement being collected by a sub-committee of the Mental Health Alliance as data-points about people's cultural experience related to mental health. It is progressing well. With enough data-points one can see to develop and implement better 'actionable' policy in facilitating organization to the benefit of individuals and the well-being of the organization. Metrics count that way in data, -JaiGuruYou! I'm delighted that is of interest to you. I'm fascinated by the problem of mental ill health as it's so debilitating when it strikes and undermines your ability to live your life how you want. A contented experience of our inner self is fundamental to good living and when that goes wrong in some way it means your entire life has gone wrong. I'm interested in what problems people in the FF meditating community present to their doctors, whether it's things like symptoms that develop after learning TM or TMSP, or whether it's that they learned TM to help cope with pre-existing problems and it didn't work. And also the prevalence of certain conditions and whether they match the distribution of similar conditions in the wider country. For instance, it used to be that doctors in the UK would get more depressed housewives suffering lack of self esteem and anxiety about life. Since then there's been greater equality between sexes and decent career prospects so that doesn't happen so much. These days the greatest problem doctors are presented with is socially alienated young men. The suicide rate of men under 30 in the UK is horrifically high. Another thing I'm interested in is whether a community that is based on shared beliefs and a common goal has fewer cases of depression caused by the same feelings of social isolation? But that's more a sociological question and probably not within the scope of what you are doing. One of the things I think will have to look closely at is the TM model of stress and stress release. I think that it's wildly inaccurate and isn't even a simplified version of what does happen. The trouble I'm sure you have is there are going to be a lot of people in the TMO who learned TM to self-prescribe a hopeful cure for things that have plagued them their whole lives. A reason it falls down is that the sort of mental process that causes, say, anxiety attacks isn't a "stress" it isn't something that can be meditated away using Marshy's model of "stress" getting trapped in the nervous system and being simply released by deep relaxation. There are many causes of anxiety states but as an example; I knew a purusha guy who learned TM because he was extremely shy with girls - to the point of panic attacks when alone in a room with one. He thought, and I doubt he was alone, that if he spent a few years in this deepest state this "stress" would get released and his anxiety would normalise. It didn't of course, because anxiety like his isn't a "stress" even thought it is stressful. Problems like his are caused by picking up signals in childhood that turn out not to be useful when we grow up. Maybe his parents were embarrassed about sex and he picked up on it and unconsciously saw it as something to feel guilty about. Upon reaching his teenage years he would be overcome by conflicting desires and the learned responses that his brain tells him are correct because that is the only thing it knows to do, but actually they cause tremendous fear. There are plenty of people who tell you they know how to deal with things like this but the only real way I've come across is by understanding the purely physical process of an anxiety attack and then gradually confronting the thing that triggers the problem. This works because when it's making you anxious your brain is trying to help you by repeating the response it learned to provided last time. It does this with everything you learn just to stop you having to concentrate when driving a car for instance. So when you start a process of retraining this system you learn that all you've got is some unhelpful programming, the brain doesn't discriminate between what is good and bad for you it's concern is just to act in the way it was taught. It doesn't learn to do something different just because you don't like the results of what it has picked up throughout your life. In fact, anxiety states get worse the longer they go unchallenged because another thing the brain does is remember what was happening last time you were stressed and when that environment is recognised again it makes you anxious again and simply because it tries to recreate what state you were in last time without realising that you weren't happy with it. I'm just scratching the surface of anxiety and how and why it develops here, it's a fascinating and entirely natural process that we all have as part of our evolution but it just gets carried away sometimes and can invade your entire life if you don't learn how to deal with it. BTW This model of personality development covers a lot of seemingly different conditions too. There are many different components to our conscious experience and most of them are unconscious and working away without us being aware of them, and they all work brilliantly but only with what information they are provided with. The brain doesn't see good or bad when it learns is probably the best point to think about, some things just aren't useful to us. This piece is a bit rushed as I'm trying to encapsulate a lot into a readable space but will expand on things if you like and if you think they don't make enough sense. I suspect the first time you come across this way of looking at the brain it may seem like the most unlikely nonsense but it does work as testable model and as a starting point for finding a cure for a lot of problems. Note I never say "mind" as I'm not even remotely convinced the mind exists as a separate thing, we are machines and mental ill health is the proof of this, it's symptoms are inescapable and reliable and even predictable given a set of circumstances. I see a huge gulf between the TM model and this modern mental health understanding. But can TM help at all in these anxiety state situations? It depends on the severity of the symptoms and how long they have been present. One way it's good is in how it breaks a cycle of thinking or takes you out of your social circle into a different scene and the change in pressure when apart from trigger events can give you breathing space. Some few people are transformed by TM - I've known a couple myself - but most aren't, most get a soothing effect for a while and a reduction in symptom severity but how long does it last? I could make a case that it's a form of tranquiliser in that it reduces anxiety symptoms and gives us enough extra freedom to make better decisions with the debilitating effects of adrenalin which is the main problem these days. Whether it's enough depends on how afflicted you are, fr some yes, others no. Interestingly, if you use TM to cope with anxiety it can make you feel worse because it never quite gets to the bottom of it and you get to a loop of going on endless courses hoping for the final cure but it never comes, which is depressing. I know people like this. When I worked at the academy I got to know a lot of people wel and discussed problems like this. It was one of the things that made me wonder whether we are on the right track. I get a lot of e-mails from the TMO featuring some micro-celeb with a quote about how amazing it is and how it solves all their problems and gives them energy, all the things I used to say when I started but I don't feel that way any more. I wonder how many of them will be like me or like the majority that quit when it becomes obvious they aren't getting what was advertised on the tin? Or remain cheerleaders like David Lynch and you perhaps? I'd like to see data on how many drop out of FF or the TMSP generally but I remember that Marshy would permit research into anything "negative". But data is vital whether it's confirms what you want it to or not, if you want to understand something that is. Good to see that's changed, best of luck with it. Ooops, that turned into a bit of an essay but it's still just the tip of a fascinating iceberg. I hope any of this waffle makes some sort of sense to you, it might just be too new a way of looking at things at first glance. I can expand on it if you find it of interest. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <salyavin808 writing in pink/red?:> wrote :
